Here's Why

You can't get there from here

I’ve been staying with Andrew and Kim in Mississauga this week, while Emma helps Kelly with babysitting in Buffalo. Buffalo, the place where the drama comes to you.

My mission yesterday was to meet my Toronto friend PeterW at Union station, navigating on my own. I failed.

After an afternoon spent checking and rechecking the websites for helpful informaion, I gave up and phoned the GO people. They directed me to the exact bus stop, and what to ask the driver. I caught the bus, and asked the driver for a GO train so I could get to Union station. He took me to Cooksville GO station.

I left the bus, to find the ticket office was only open between 7am and 8:25am. The ticket machine was still being built. I asked a guy waiting in the parking area, and he told me to hop on a train “same as in Europe”. I went in and found that there was only a one-way platform, and no signs or maps or schedules. The tracks for the other way were unavailable from the platform. So when a train turned up, I got on board. It went the wrong way, so I got off at the next stop. I was pleased to find that this platform had two sides. It was possible, in theory to catch a train to Union, downtown. Time passed.

I was later to discover that the train doesn’t actually travel downtown to Union station after 8:25AM.

I phoned PeterW to cancel, he couldn’t help me with the GO trains or buses. I called Andrew, who suggested I look for buses on the main roads, and phone back if I had trouble.

I walked 4 blocks, went to check a road name on the $10 Palmpilot, and discovered it missing. I retraced my steps and was very lucky to find it where I’d left it, next to the public phone. I returned it to a zippered pocket with relief, and then took my leave of the last public phone I saw for SEVEN KILOMETRES.

I saw a bus pass by with “Sorry for the inconvenience: Out of service” animated on a sign, but no actual bus stops. There weren’t any places for a taxi to stop for me either. I rested at a MacDonalds and got food, but there were no public phones. It was pretty weird to be crossing highways in the dark which didn’t always have “walk” signs, trying to be mindful of the different traffic rules in Canada while also trying to keep my balance. But hey, if this had happened a year ago, I wouldn’t have made it the seven kilometres to the next phone, and rescue by Andrew.

Did I mention it was a smog alert day?

Hooray for the performance-decreasing steroids that kept me vertical, its a shame I can’t stay on them long-term without getting osteoporosis.

Rejection really hurts

ABC’s Catalyst reports http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1195656.htm a story about how the pain of a broken heart is felt in the same region of the brain, the anterior cingulate cortex, as physical pain.

In the evolution of humans as social animals, rejection from the group can mean life or death, or at least affect your ability to have offspring and your status.

Fortunately, the researchers also found the brain’s mechanism to relieve the pain of rejection in the right ventral prefrontal cortex, over the eyebrow. This region of the brain is exercised when you describe your distress either in writing or in conversation.

So rejection genuinely, physically hurts, and talking to friends and writing about your experience really helps to turn down the pain.

Best ten bucks I ever spent

Last week we went to the Canadian National Exhibition, which is kind of like the Sydney Easter Show. There were a few cool things to see but not quite buy, like glow-in-the-dark t-shirt prints that changed colour in sunlight, and adult sizes of those sneakers with wheels hidden in the heels. They were just short of my size.
I’ve been envying those kids who switch from walking to gliding just by changing their weight, but perhaps I need to rewire my physical skill a little further before I get a pair.

The real find of the CNE was the cheappalm.com stand. Emma and I bought a Palm VII for C$10 each. Fully functional, with 2 Meg of non-expandable RAM and PalmOs 3.2. Of course the Pam VII also comes with a mobitex radio modem for wireless internet, but Palm.net went offline on the very day we bought the machines.

I’ve been entering ideas, thoughts, and things to remember in paper notepads since I was 9. The pads fill up, and then go into a drawer. Essential stuff gets copied to a more permanent place or to the new notepad, or gets forgotten in the drawer. In 1994 I first saw the IBM PC110 on a Japanese website, it was a 486 with a colour screen the size of a paperback novel. Stupidly, I set it as my benchmark of what I wanted from a pocket computer.

In 1996 I could finally afford a pocket computer and could see it as a better brain prosthetic than my paper notepad. However I wanted the colour screen I’d seen on the PC110, and some decent storage space. Then my income halved due to health problems, and I prudently held off.

So feeling poor, I actually hesitated about spending the $10 for a grey-screen, 2 meg, used Palm. Emma convinced me by buying one for herself.
Having gotten past the ten year old habit of researching palmtops because I need one but not buying one YET, I followed by buying the hotsync cable and a funky fold-out keyboard for another $15.

Emma’s been saying every day “This is the best ten bucks I ever spent!”

The Memopad is my main application while I transfer my notepad contents.
The TimeZone app is useful. I’ll see what else I can find as useful while travelling. I also have the the JPalm juggling simulator loaded.

I can do much more when I have my own desktop as a home base again.

Peter Watts has a blog!

Rifeters.com Newscrawl is the blog of Peter Watts, author of the Rifters trilogy: Starfish, Maelstrom and now ß-Max. I enjoyed Starfish and Maelstrom, I’m looking forward to ß-Max.

On his blog Peter has some cool scientific stuff he’s uncovered in researching his new writing projects and excerpts from his stories.
Fun!

I never post these online quizes, but...

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You’re Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland!

by Lewis Carroll

After stumbling down the wrong turn in life, you’ve had your mind
opened to a number of strange and curious things. As life grows curiouser and curiouser,
you have to ask yourself what’s real and what’s the picture of illusion. Little is coming
to your aid in discerning fantasy from fact, but the line between them is so blurry that
it’s starting not to matter. Be careful around rabbit holes and those who smile to much,
and just avoid hat shops altogether.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Nuclear medicine overboard!

On August 9th I broadcasted on 2SER my argument that if a country wishes to reap the benefits of nuclear medicine, then it is unethical for them to push any environmental costs or dangers onto another country. In short, its unethical and NOT green to import nuclear medicines. Any nation using them should make them, if there is any real risk to making them. If there’s not any real risk, as I explore in the report, then there is no argument for closing down the Lucas Height research reactor in southern Sydney. I posted this on the blog on August 10th.

On 30th August 2004, a bunch of press releases hit my inbox about a new report from a professional protest group called ” the Medical Association for the Prevention of War”, which I’ve never heard of before. The first was from the Australian Greens party titled ” no need for nuclear reactor”, and didn’t contain any facts or arguments except for the URL of the MAPW web site http://www.mapw.org.au, where they claimed you could read the shocking new report. I checked the web site, only to find that the report was “to be released on August 31st”. This explained why the Greens failed to present any new arguments or facts - they hadn’t read the report, they’d sent off the press release, without checking the facts.

Three hours later I received a second press release from the Australian Conservation Foundation, titled “Nuclear Plan Fails its Medical”, quoting the same report, this time introducing the idea that we should import nuclear medicines, but not saying where from. It also introduced the lie that nuclear medicines can be made in cyclotrons. Nuclear medicines are made with neutrons, and synchrotrons can only manipulate electrons and protons because it uses magnets to push their electric charge. Neutrons can only be obtained from reactors. The report was referenced again, but it still wasn’t available from the web site to see if it had some new information.

The report has finally been posted to the web site, and instead of posting the text there, they have made available a 20 megabyte PDF file for download, which is enough to put off most people on normal internet connections in Australia. 19 pages could easily be saved as HTML and made available in a fast downloading format.

The only new information in thereport is that the USA imports its nuclear medicines from Canada, pushing any risks, real or imaginary, on to them. Thats it.

The Greens are such consistent liars and peddlars of misinformation on the issue of nuclear research in Australia, that I can’t vote for them anymore.