ChezLark

I went for a walk a week or so ago around Greenlake with some friends, as the sun was settings. Here’s a tree near the parking lot:

I like trees.

As many of you will know, it peeves me to no end that one day I will have to die. I have often wondered out loud why it isn’t the case that all biologists drop what they’re working on now and make a concerted effort to solve the problem of death. The way I see it, once we get that taken care of, we’ll have vastly more time to think about all the other annoyances we have to deal with.

Anyway, apparently there’s another kooky, bearded, computer scientist in the world who thinks just like me. Separated at birth? This Slate article has some information on him. He runs the “Methuselah Mouse Project“, which, X-Prize-like, offers a cash prize to scientists making significant advances towards eliminating aging.

Bizarrely, this Slate article argues that Canada may one day cause the liberalization of drug laws in the US, particularly as they relate to pot.

The argument goes that the WTO could credibly rule that the US’s current (state-specific) tolerance of domestically produced marijuana is an impermissible trade barrier, and that the WTO has the teeth to make its rulings stick.

First, though, someone would have to bring a complaint to the WTO. Who is most likely to do this? Arguably, Canada. Amazingly, “Canadian marijuana is a $7 billion industry, or larger than Canada’s wheat and dairy industries, and its fisheries”. I can only assume that the entire province of British Columbia is now one enormous pot farm.

The Slate article also hilariously points out:

The last two prime ministers have been legalization advocates. (Former Prime Minister Jean Chretien famously said, “The decriminalization of marijuana is making normal what is the practice. … I will have my money for my fine and a joint in the other hand.”) And some Canadian courts have even struck down marijuana laws as violative of fundamental rights. Even Tommy Chong (of Cheech and Chong) is from Alberta — the Canadian complaint at the WTO could well begin, “Hey, man …”

Here is an experimental shot from the back seat of Timmy’s rental car, on the way back from Baker:

In the name of looking at things from another perspective, here is another perspective on yesterday’s tree:

I like trees.

I’ve decided that I inappropriately, albeit metaphorically, blame fruit.

To elucidate this, I direct you to the transcript of the episode “Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps” of the British series “Coupling”, which is possibly some of the funniest TV I have ever seen. There is a hilarious piece of dialog between Jeff, a sex-obsessed but socially inept guy, and Jane, a free-wheeling woman. Jane has dropped by Jeff’s apartment and Jeff is attempting, awkwardly, to entertain her:

“Can I get you anything?
Jane: I think I’m fine actually.
“Anything at all?”
Jane: What have you got?
“Four biscuits and an apple.”
Jane: Oh
“I’ve owned the apple for awhile it’s probably still broadly feasible but I wouldn’t want to talk it up.”
Jane: I’m fine really.
“It’s very easy to miss the apple window, isn’t it? I get very tense around apples.”
Jane: You do?
“Well I get very tense in general. I think I’ve fallen into the trap of blaming fruit.

This is a very profound exchange, I think. I am also rather tense in general, but I think I often fall into the trap of blaming fruit. But then, don’t we all?

Here’s another tree. I like trees.

This was taken a couple of weeks ago at Mount Baker.

I saw an orthopedic surgeon about my hip this morning. They took some X-Rays, and nothing is wrong with the IM nail hardware, so that’s good. Of course, my hip still hurts. The doctor’s take was:

• My hip pain is likely due to the protrusion of the two anchoring screws at the top of my femur, particularly since my body has been depositing bone caps over them, as well as the top of the titanium rod (this is fairly normal). The protrusions irritate the IT band and other soft tissue around the hip.
• Removing the hardware would likely relieve that irritation and the associated hip pain
• The intrinsic risk (anaesthetic, complications) of a surgury like this is minimal (much less than 1%) for a young, healthy person
• However, the surgury involves a recovery period of a few weeks while the incisions heal.

Basically, surgeons are like engineers: they like to fix things. The hardware seems to be causing trouble, so the logical response (for a surgeon) is to remove it.

It’s generally understood to not be wise to remove an IM nail less than a year after its installation, so I have at least until this summer to think things over. I have begun mulling.

This is a view of mount Shuksan from the upper base area at Mount Baker.

Sadly, I may not get a chance to get back into the mountains on a snowboard; the season is drawing perilously close to its usual closing dates, with no precipitation in sight, and persistent unseasonably high temperatures.

Here is an image from the Mount Baker art set:

The Black and White treatment here mimics infrared film emulsions: the green tones are rendered very light, to make them “glow”.

A week ago, I spent the weekend at a cabin near Mount Baker, which is in northern Washington state, near the Canadian border, with a bunch of friends. A fantastic time was had by all, and I got to take a bunch of pictures of the beautiful countryside.

• Here are some pictures of all our good-looking friends.
• Here are “art” pictures; landscapes and such.

This winter has been horrific for skiing; snowpack in the Washington cascades is a fraction of normal, and many of the ski resorts have been closed for much of the winter. Ugh!

In further evidence that this winter sucks, the Seattle PI reports that the North Cascades highway may have its earliest opening ever. The North Cascades highway is a scenic loop through the Cascades; it shuts down where highway 20 climbs into the mountains when snow starts accumulating (it closed mid-December this year). The previous record for re-opening the road was March 22nd…. in 2001.

A little while ago I wrote about a pilot program in Vancouver, BC, to distribute heroin to addicts in an attempt to reduce crime associated with the drug trade. Today, the Seattle PI is running a story about a proposal by the King County Bar Association that suggests a similar approach. It doesn’t seem likely to fly.

This past weekend I got together with a bunch of friends and we spent the weekend at Mount Baker. A good time was had by all, despite the fact that snow conditions were so abysmal that none of us got any snowboarding done at all.

While we were there, we listened to a hilarious stand-up comic called Mitch Hedberg. He has a joke that runs something like:

“I was walking with a friend of mine and he said ‘I hear music’ [pause] And I said, ‘Of course you do; that’s the only way you can take it in! That is how I perceive it, also. You are not special’.”

Well, the woman described in this article is special; she is a musician and is a “synaesthete”, someone who experiences sensation in more than one sense from the same stimulation. She perceives musical note-intervals both visually and as a specific taste.

Slate is running a very interesting article on the essential nature of bullshit. The author reviews a philosophy professor’s work on defining what, exactly, bullshit is. In the summarized work, an example is constructed from a tonsillectomy patient describing how she felt as “like a dog that’s been run over”. The patient is Pascal, and the questioner is Wittgenstein. It occurs to Wittgenstein that Pascal is bullshitting, since Pascal presumably has no experience of what it actually feels like to be a dog that has been run over.

[Why] does it strike [Wittgenstein] that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives what Pascal says as being — roughly speaking, for now — unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of describing reality. She does not even think she knows, except in the vaguest way, how a run-over dog feels. Her description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is merely making up.
[...]
Is Pascal lying? No. She isn’t trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how she really feels, and she isn’t trying to deceive Wittgenstein about how a dog would feel if run over. Her error, Frankfurt concludes, isn’t that she conducted a faulty inquiry into how a dog would feel if run over, but that she conducted no inquiry at all (in this case, because none is possible).”It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth — this indifference to how things really are — that I regard as the essence of bullshit.”
[...]
Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. …The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

The article has more, with discussion of the Bush administration (of course).

The Seattle PI reports today that if a magnitude 6.7 quake hit on the Seattle Fault, the result could be “more than 1,600 deaths and 24,000 injuries, economic losses of about $33 billion, and the destruction of nearly 10,000 structures with another 30,000 left uninhabitable”. There is apparently evidence that quakes of this strength have occurred in the past.

OK, not really. But the rhetoric over the missile shield issue seems to be heating up. I mentioned yesterday that Canada was opting out of the US missile shield project. Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled a meeting with Canadian diplomats, possibly to discuss the missile issue.

Apparently, Prime Minister Paul Martin had said last week that:

the United States must get permission before firing on any incoming missiles over Canada.

“This is our airspace, we’re a sovereign nation and you don’t intrude on a sovereign nation’s airspace without seeking permission,” Martin said.

However,

Outgoing U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci had said in late January: “We think it’s in Canada’s sovereign interest to be in the room to decide what’s going to happen when there’s an incoming missile.”

He denied media reports that Bush had told Martin that a future president might question why American taxpayers were funding Canadian defense if Ottawa wasn’t supporting the U.S. missile shield.

[...]

Stockwell Day, the Conservative Party’s foreign affairs critic, ridiculed Martin’s position that Washington would have to alert Ottawa before shooting down a missile.

“These missiles are coming in at 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) a second, and if the president calls the 1-800 line and gets: ‘Press 1 if you want English, press 2 if you want French, press 0 if nobody’s there …’ I mean, it’s crazy.”

Here is my humble proposal: the US should not fund Canadian defense. Nobody is going to bomb Canada. Design the missile shield so it doesn’t cover Canada. Why is it such a problem if Canada doesn’t want to participate in Bush’s unworkable boondoggle?