To both of my regular readers:

There will be an indefinite hiatus in my blog. My sister-in-law is seriously ill and everything else is going on hold while we all try to help as much as we can.

"Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

Right.

Colby weighs in on Canadian Thanksgiving; he notes Damian Penny's ferreting out of the origins of Canadian Thanksgiving. It was what we'd today call "an exercise in nation-building." (Even the date is stolen! Columbus Day coincides with Canadian Thanksgiving.)

We'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with my wife's family: in particular, her sister's family, her parents, and some of her dad's siblings. Sixteen altogether.

Colby also notes that Canadians take their thanksgivings easier than we Americans do; perhaps that because, with the $CAD being where it is, Canadians have less to feel thankful for....

Seriously, though, Thanksgiving is the big family holiday in the States. There's no hassling about inclusiveness, as the holiday has been scoured free of any religious connection. (Pilgrims? Fleeing persecution? What?!) Everyone celebrates Thanksgiving.

In LA, celebrities working off their community service convictions trundle down to the Hollywood homeless shelter, where there's a good chance Christian Slater will be serving up turkey and James Brown will be slingin' hash.

My favorite Thanksgiving in recent years was the one we celebrated in Santa Monica at Al's. He was my mom's neighbor in Santa Monica (he died earlier this year at 83), and a hell of a guy. He worked in the building trades in Los Angeles for probably all of his life, except for the time he spent in the Army in World War II. Men like him literally built LA.

That year, Al had a big picture of a nervous-looking turkey up in his living-room window. The turkey was holding a big sign that said "This year, try a ham!" I never figured that one out, as Al was Jewish... maybe his grandkids put him up to it.

Went running this morning. I almost didn't, because my exercise partner cancelled at the last minute (actually, 7:40 this morning). So I wasted some time and read my blogs until I decided that I really did want to go running today. Especially since I blew off Thursday (being sick) and didn't catch up on Friday (still being sick).

So I went out on my own. My knee is feeling better these days. I think I have the pain traced to running on the outside of the sidewalk: this means that I spend some time running on the horizontal inclines of driveways. My partner runs on the insides and therefore on the flatter parts of the driveways.

There was snow left over from the last two days, but it'll probably be gone by this afternoon. It stuck pretty well, especially on north lawns and in the shade of evergreens, but today is bright and clear, and the sun is already warming the roads. There's a little bit of black ice; that is, very thin but hard patches of ice. Black ice is slippery and very hard to see. I managed to avoid most of it; I didn't take any spills, anyway.

I had a chance to time myself today. I would characterize my running pace as 'a slow jog', and that is in fact what it is. I am making 7' 20" to the kilometer. That's not suitable for a marathon; to complete a marathon in under five hours, you need to maintain an average pace of 7' 8" per kilometer or faster. I didn't expect to be very fast this early in the training, but it's disappointing nonetheless. I once ran a mile in the time it now takes me to run a kilometer.

More later, I hope. I've taken the last two days off for my cold, but I hope to catch up on everything (house cleaning, work, blogging -- maybe even brewing?) this holiday weekend. (It's Canadian Thanksgiving.)

Medicinal pot growers are suing a newspaper for disclosing too much about their location.

Apparently, violence is involved in the illegal drug trade. This according to the allegedly injured grower, one Michael Maniotis:

"What happens to locations in Vancouver that are known to be cultivating cannabis, legal or otherwise? The doors get kicked down, people come inside, there's home invasions, people sometimes get killed."

Gee, then, why don't you not invite the media to your grow-op? Especially after already getting into trouble with the cops:

Maniotis has been charged with trafficking in marijuana at the Merlin Project's Marijuana Tea House, which was shut down by police in January after only a few weeks in operation. Police said people without Health Canada licences were smoking pot and that equipment was being set up to grow plants.

Medical officers of health are free to speak on Kyoto, confirms Ralph Klein, premier of Alberta. The Palliser Health Authority plans to meet today to reconsider the firing of David Swann.

But perhaps David Swann wasn't fired for his unpopular views on Kyoto? Was he perhaps fired for inappropriately using his public position to air his political views? After all, when he gave a speech titled "Genocide In Iraq", he was identified only by his University of Calgary affiliation.

(The Iraq genocide Swann is concerned about is caused by UN sanctions, not Saddam. And according to this Globe and Mail reporter, the 1.5 million body count Swann attributes to sanctions is made up.)

Coffee demand is down. So are world coffee prices. For some farmers, the price that buyers are willing to pay for their product does not cover the cost of producing the crop.

This is not surprising: coffee demand varies rapidly, and coffee production varies slowly. Land needs to be cleared to be put into cultivation and maintained once cleared. Farmers who grow cash crops are in business, and sometimes a business has a bad year. Or two. Or four in a row.

(But I don't see restaurant owners crying out for price subsidies and handouts. I don't see benefit concerts organized for local hardware store owners.)

Oxfam's proposed solution is to destroy some 5 million bags of coffee, thus raising the market price. They're asking the major retailers (Kraft, Nestle, Sara Lee etc.) to do this. The major retailers, sensibly enough, claim that this will only address this year's surplus and will actually encourage more overproduction.

Doesn't anyone else find it strange that the Ayn Rand Institute is a non-profit organization?

Copyright © 1995–2002 Ayn Rand® Institute (ARI). All rights reserved. Reproduction is prohibited. ARI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Contributions to ARI in the United States are tax-exempt to the extent provided by law.

What's more, a non-profit that discourages volunteerism? (But some volunteerism is okay.)

Non-profit means immoral doesn't it?

At least it's a FAQ.

So I was going to watch my favorite unemployed New Yorker just now; but I've been asked to 'keep it down'. So I'll rant instead.

Hewers of wood and drawers of water are rare in our hydrocarbon-based economy; rare enough that we can forget the origins of the term. But they're not rare in the world.

Last December my wife and I had the privilege of visiting Mali, one of the poorest countries in the world. Mali is where you can find Timbuktu, or if you prefer the colonial misspelling, Tombouctou. It's also where you can find my mother, working as a Peace Corps volunteer, which is why we were out there almost a year ago.

My mom is stationed in a village with no electricity or running water. If you want water, you have to draw it yourself from the water table -- at least 5 m below the surface, sometimes more. If you want heat for comfort or cooking, you have to gather wood from en brousse to burn in your fireplace. Drawing water and gathering wood are necessary life-sustaining activities that must be attended to each day.

Think about what it means for us, here in the West, to have solved the heat and water problems. None of us spends time worrying about personally obtaining fuel or water. It's delegated and forgotten. Pay some money at the end of the month for hot and cold running water.

The original meaning of "draw" (akin to drag) has even atrophied out of our language. Not so in Bore, the language of the region where my mother lives. The words for "draw water" are le nyu, and the words and concept are very much alive.

We have eliminated whole categories of mentally unrewarding physical work from our world. Isn't that inspiring?

More tomorrow about hewers and drawers (you'll see the point I originally wanted to make.) No Colby diplomacy update -- bummer!

I spent the morning in bed with a cold. We spent the afternoon reorganizing the office at the organization where we volunteer. Moving furniture and toys &c. Very worthwhile if not "productive" in the classic sense.

Excellent entry from Nukevet, whom I've never heard of before. He makes my blogroll, not that it's much of an honor. Link via Misha, whose new site rocks.

Seems like everybody is switching to Movable Type now, except for the unreconstructed individualists.

Should a betting pool be started on when Colby goes to MT? (Real permalinks... can you hear them calling you?)

Here's a quick note for residents of other provinces: read this article from the U.S. Department of Energy.

NATURAL GAS
Canada holds about 59.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) of proven natural gas reserves. Canada currently produces about 6.3 Tcf of natural gas per year, making it the world's third largest natural gas producer (after the United States and Russia) and second largest natural gas exporter (after Russia). Canada's natural gas exports go almost exclusively to the United States. Canadian natural gas consumption is projected to grow significantly in coming decades, largely for use in electricity generation. As natural gas production and infrastructure grow, there is a potential for emergence of a unified North American natural gas market.

Exploration and Production
Like the oil industry, Canada's natural gas industry is based primarily in Alberta, reaching into neighboring Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and the southern Northwest Territories. Saskatchewan is expected to become an increasingly important natural gas province in coming years. Atlantic Canada is a newer industry focal point. Nova Scotia's Sable Island and offshore Newfoundland hold significant natural gas reserves.

All of you out there in BC, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia: higher carbon taxes will mean that the exploitation of your natural gas will be less profitable. It will be attended to less swiftly by the multinational oil companies which create jobs in rural gas-producing areas. And your power needs will not be met.

Alberta, of course, mostly burns coal for power and gas for heat, so we're screwed no matter what.

I've been wanting to go back to "hewers of wheat and drawers of oil" -- a throwaway Alberta crack from John Barber's anti-Alberta, pro-Kyoto article in the 19 September Globe and Mail. This is a very important insult because its meaning is unclear in modern society.

Obviously it's a modification of hewers of wood and drawers of water. But does John remember the rest of the story? I doubt he does. I will retell it in brief, attributing the roles as he does in his article.

All the peoples in the Promised Land are in great fear of the Israelites (Eastern Canadians) and their leader, Joshua (Jean Chretien). The princes of these people (western Premiers, notably Ralph Klein) go to Joshua. They deceive him and beg him to spare their lives. This he does, magnanimously. When the Israelites realize that they have been deceived, they punish these people (westerners) with eternal slavery. I quote: "For this are you accursed: every one of you shall always be a slave (hewers of wood and drawers of water) for the house of my God."

I doubt Barber really meant to show that he wants to enslave Alberta to the East. But I also doubt that Barber really understands what would happen to Ontario if Canada's hydrocarbon industry tanked. Do Ontarians drive only electric cars and heat their homes only with electric heaters?

Memo to the East: please stop trying to find new ways to tax us. The G.S.T. is bad enough; the federal taxes were already killing us beforehand. We've got our provincial taxes cut to the bare minimum -- 10% flat income tax and a small corporate tax -- and we're creating all the value we can. Raising our taxes is not going to encourage us to create more.

We're the goose, OK? Please don't kill us.

Sorry about the width of this, but I had to get it in while it was still on my screen. I was reading this article about the Kyoto treaty and the 200,000 jobs ratifying it is expected to cost in Canada, when I realized what the ad was for.

My favorite Kyoto-treaty comment so far came via Wednesday morning's Rutherford show on 630 CHED (the local right-wing radio). Apparently, in order to conform to Kyoto, some sort of nationwide planning board needs to be created to allocate emissions among proposed new developments. The example cited was, "Which do you think is greener: a pulp and paper mill in Alberta or a pulp and paper mill in Ontario?" To which I must add that clearly, the pulp and paper mill is greenest when it's in Quebec. Right?

Honestly, between this and the Ayn Rand Institute newsletters being confiscated, it's like living in a bad remake of Atlas Shrugged. In which case, I want to be Dick McNamara.

There's snow.

Admittedly, about 3 mm of snow, and it's probably not going to last out the day.

But it's funny, because last night I was thinking aloud about garage logistics, and one of the things I mentioned was the need to reorganize which cinder blocks are where in the garage, so that the four that belong to our housemate can be properly returned to her trunk. She keeps them there in winter to improve the traction her rear-wheel-drive car gets.

My wife and our housemate, both Edmonton natives, laughed at me for worrying about snow so early in the year.

Har har.

Good thing we picked the last of the carrots in the middle of last week. I suspect they soon would have started rotting in the ground.

After several days of waffling and who knows how much bad press, the Canadian Customs and Revenue Agency (CCRA) releases The Ayn Rand Institute's "In Moral Defense Of Israel":

IRVINE, CA -- ”After a three-day detention, Canadian Customs released today a shipment of newsletters from the Ayn Rand Institute titled "In Moral Defense of Israel."
...
"Hopefully our brochures will get to the University of Toronto in time for the speech that I will deliver there this Sunday," said Dr. Brook. "The essential point is that we are expressing an intellectual view—and we have an absolute right to advocate that view."

And here I was all set to mirror it illegally, in a pointless act of civil disobedience.

I've heard it said before that 'thoughtcrime' exists in Canada, but I've never had the law explained to me; possibly because it's (allegedly) technically illegal under the law to enumerate what kinds of thoughts are illegal. Or so I'm told.

Since I've been too lazy to brew for the last month or so, and we had company for dinner last Sunday, I picked up some beer at Cristall's Wine Market.

I wound up with some Okanagan Spring English Porter. Their website copy claims

It is a flavourful porter with a well rounded, fruity taste.

It's pretty damn sweet, too. I wouldn't get it again, but if you like sweet porters, this might be for you.

So the New Jersey supreme court has ruled that Frank Lautenberg's name can be substituted for Frank Torricelli's. Highlights of the arguments and the justices' questions to the lawyers can be found at law.com. My favorite quote is:

Genova added that, if ordered, the Democratic Party would cover the costs of redoing the ballots, but suggested public funds should be used. "The costs of democracy are the costs of democracy," he said.

Indeed. Hey Genova, here's a news flash: business is business.

Despite Genova's stirring argument on the subject, the SCONJ ruled that the Democratic party did have to pay for the costs of reprinting and remailing those ballots that have already been mailed and printed.

But it occurs to me that a much cheaper fix was available all along: aliasing. Lautenberg just changes his name to Torricelli and Torricelli changes his name away (to clear the field). After the certificate of election is presented to Lautenberg/Torricelli, the two men can change their names back. Total cost: $120 (four name changes at $29.95/per). This is certainly cheaper than the estimated $800,000 cost of reprinting and remailing the ballots already printed.

I suppose one risk is a possible GOP denial-of-service attack where they convince many other people to change their name to 'Robert Torricelli'. However, only the real Robert Torricelli will be residing at the address listed on the nomination petition; the Democrats just need to make sure that Lautenberg/Torricelli moves in and establishes that as his address before the election. So throw in the cost of a couple of U-Hauls and some free election worker labor -- it's still far cheaper than remailing.

Work is the mind-killer.

Work is the mind-killer.

Sorry; I had to get that out. Now excuse me while I geek out mightily.

Lots of good things happened today. Notably, I was finally able to get my ssh-vpn set up between us and our client, because I discovered pty-redir98. Perhaps I should have been paying more attention in the last 4 years, but I didn't realize that Unix98 pty's would be such a pain in the butt.

Also we (read: I) got MovableType set up for them internally so they can use it to document their R&D efforts. Yay. Using MySQL. Yay.

But on the downside, Telus turns out to have lied to me about how much it will cost monthly to set up DSL for the organization we volunteer with. It'll be $49.95 instead of $34.95 a month. Unfortunately, I got approval for $34.95 a month, and this group is tight on cash, thus tight-fisted. I phoned over to Shaw and got a quote at $42.95 a month, so we're going with them. But it's annoying.

Then I opened up the Linksys DSL/Cable Router that I had gotten a couple weeks ago at London Drugs and it turns out I got the wrong kind. I got the kind that is just a firewall-in-a-box instead of a firewall-in-a-box-plus-hub. So I had to get the receipt back -- which, since I already have a reimbursal check, means getting it out of the treasurer's files, photocopying it, putting the photocopy back in the treasurer's files. Then I left the receipt in the photocopier when I left.

Bleah.

Colby's an atheist, and Bene Diction likes him anyway. But what I find interesting is the kuro5hin article by Frank, an atheist from the States, that started this topic:

Unfortunately, those very people make it very difficult. Even when confronted by someone like me, very even-tempered and polite, if and when they learn I am an atheist all the usual stereotypes and prejudices boil up.

I get that sometimes when it comes up that I'm Catholic. Not so much in North America, but in Europe I've certainly had the long look down the nose and "You can't possibly believe that" response. You're a believer? Socially untouchable. But I can sympathize with Frank the American atheist; when I was an atheist I would occasionally get the socially untouchable treatment as well.

Maybe it's the belief that's upsetting to the vast majority of agnostics. After all, an atheist isn't an unbeliever -- he's a firm believer in nothing. Agnostics are the true unbelievers. Most people are complacent or agnostic or some linear combination of the two. Belief makes them uncomfortable.

(Or else it's just something irritating about me and Frank that Colby and Bene don't have.)

I just loved this Reuters opening paragraph in an article about the coffee industry:

ADDIS ABABA, Sept 30 (Reuters) - More than 30 percent of eastern Ethiopia's coffee crop could disappear within 10 years if regional farmers keep up a current trend to dump coffee in favour of a plant with a mild stimulant effect

In the Reuters world, coffee's not a stimulant, and Yassir Arafat is not a terrorist.

Steve den Beste has a long response to an interesting take on Cosmic Justice.

If you recall, about a week ago, Steve was trying to understand the worldview held by people who believe that the correct course of action in the wake of 9/11 is for the U.S. to become nicer. To wit: to increase U.S. foreign aid to everybody but Israel; to ratify the Kyoto treaty, International Criminal Court treaty and the landmine ban; etc. (What lgf calls "idiotarianism")

Steve concluded that such views can be explained if we postulate a belief in cosmic justice. In a worldview that includes this postulate, bad things are happening to the U.S. now because we have done bad things in the past. Counterattacking our enemies in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad idea -- not only will it not fix the root cause of our current troubles (bad karma), it is actually counterproductive, causing us to pile up more bad karma.

Obviously, I am presenting a mere summary of den Beste's argument. If there's anybody who consciously believes in international karma this way, they probably find this discussion to be an unpleasant caricature of their beliefs. But most people, when faced with this proposed explanation for their worldview, deny the cosmic justice postulate.

Take the letter Steven responded to the next day:

And you go further and accuse the liberals--who believe that American behavior is a HUGE factor in the behavior of our enemies--of some kind of belief in karma, and some kind of supernatural cosmic justice. As a liberal atheist myself, I believe in cause and effect, not karma.

Clearly, we need another axiom -- or a less unpleasant way of saying "Cosmic Justice" to account for these views. A committed Marxist, for example, would never agree with the Cosmic Justice axiom. Matt Cline proposes a color-coded theory of Social Dynamics, which Steve takes on in this article. (Honestly I find the Green/Orange labels annoying, as those are the 'gang colors' for the terrorists in Northern Ireland.)

Steven deals with the ideas put forth by this system. Personally, I like to respond to arguments like this by turning the tables. Okay, you're Green, I'm Orange; you have moral relativism as an axiom (excuse me: you recognize that morality is a social construct), while I believe in an absolute standard of good and evil. I claim that I'm right and you're wrong. You can't judge me because (by relativism) you have to acknowledge my axioms as valid, at least for me. The debate automatically ends because we're arguing on different levels.

I don't find Social Dynamics to be convincing. I put forward the Golden Rule as an alternative axiom which can also lead to these conclusions.

First let me take the very uncontroversial position of endorsing the Golden Rule. I do. You all should do unto others as you wish to be done unto. Here's the take of Christina Hoff Sommers, one of my favorite writers, on this subject:

We must make students aware that there is a standard of ethical ideals that all civilizations worthy of the name have discovered. We must encourage them to read the Bible, Aristotle's Ethics, Shakespeare's King Lear, the Koran, and the Analects of Confucius. When they read almost any great work, they will encounter these basic moral values: integrity, respect for human life, self-control, honesty, courage, and self-sacrifice. All the world's major religions proffer some version of the Golden Rule, if only in its negative form: Do not do unto others as you would not have them do unto you.

I believe that some of those who propose more foreign aid and multilateralism as the solution to terrorism are motivated by Golden Rule-based reasoning. They reason, "The United States should provide aid to the poor, because that is what we would wish done for us, if we were poor." They reason, "The United States should sign the landmine ban, because we don't want our enemies to deploy antipersonnel mines against us." They believe that the United States should use its unique position of power to set a good example for the rest of the world. They fear that by adopting a policy of pre-emption, the United States is abandoning a foreign policy based on the Golden Rule. (It might be a valid concern, but see below.)

And U.S. foreign policy has been based on the Golden Rule for a long time. America is often accused of isolationism; this is in fact an application of the Golden Rule. We want other nations to leave us alone, so we leave them alone. We like to be left alone, mainly.

And although it's a valid Christian interpretation of the Golden Rule to say that when we are attacked we ought to sit still and take it, it's not the way America has run its foreign policy in the past. Remember Pearl Harbor? What about the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram? It's in our history. Do not "do unto us"; or else we will come and "do unto you." With pre-emption, we are starting to depart slightly from the Golden Rule. (But only just: after all, they did pre-emptively attack us.)

Imperial fears are raised now but hardly seem warranted, given our history of disarmament and returning to Golden Rule-based isolationism.

It's not that we've abandoned the Golden Rule, even now. We really just want to be left alone. And we'll kill anyone who refuses to leave us alone. Is that so hard to understand?