Favourite Quotes

I'm going to put some quotes I like here, updating the page from time to time like the "Headlines" post.

"The US is a state designed by geniuses so it could be run by idiots." (quoted by Friedman)

"It's like farting in a cheese shop: it's not the main problem." Sean Locke.

Utilities doomed by solar panels!

Fascinating post by David Roberts on Grist about how the utilities business model, in use for a hundred years or so, might be destroyed by creeping use of home solar panels.

Based on a report by the industry itself, it suggests that the electric grid might go the way of the fixed phone, Kodak, RIM and the US Postal Service. Even limited penetration of solar panels, the report says, will begin a vicious cycle in which the utilities will have to increase costs to compensate for declining revenues, thus driving more people to install solar, and so on.

Let's hope this is prescient.

Floods

The June 2013 floods in Southern Alberta, where we live, have probably been the worst since records have been kept, destroying homes and leaving people with unimaginable cleanups, in High River, Calgary, Bragg Creek, Canmore, and many other municipalities.

River flows, in the Bow, Elbow, and Highwood Rivers, were four to five times the levels of the previous flood in 2005 and around ten times normal.

Normal flow in June for the Bow in Calgary is around 200+ cubic metres per second. At its peak this year, it reached 2400.

Normal flow in June for the Elbow below the Glenmore reservoir in Calgary is about 40+ cubic metres per second. This year it reached 700.

See more statistics about the flood here.

Our house sits just above the 100-year flood plain, as shown on standard city maps. The two bottom levels of the yard, by the river, are in the flood plain and were flooded, up to exactly the top of the stairs from the second level to the main yard. There are now three or four inches of silt on top of the grass on the bottom two levels. Our house escaped, with just half an inch of water in the basement from sewer backup, which we managed to vacuum up almost immediately. We were evacuated Thursday evening and managed to return home on Friday to check for possible damage, which is when we found the water and cleaned it up. At this point there was still power. We then returned home definitively on Saturday, though the power by then was turned off until Monday.

The rest of our street, both east and west of us, was under a metre or more of water. At least one house was lifted from its foundations, just a few blocks away.

Apart from the record high water levels and unprecedented number of evacuees, there was no shortage of curious incidents like the following:

• When it seemed the zoo would be flooded, the first plans called for the big cats, tigers and lions, to be moved to holding cells in the court building in downtown Calgary.
• Then, when the zoo was flooded, the hippos got out of their enclosure and were very close to escaping into the Bow River. Hippos are apparently very aggressive and dangerous. What they might have done if swept downstream is anyone's guess.
• A neighbour's daughter came back to her father's house in a canoe to rescue the Van Gogh and Group of Seven originals and, she said, get the food from the  fridge.
• A CP train derailed when a bridge collapsed, apparently because the gravel it was built on had been eroded. Six cars carrying a diesel-like substance were in danger of falling into the Bow River, being carried downstream and posing a danger to anything in their way, including, one imagines, other bridges.
• A week after the flooding, we were surprised to learn that some of Daniel's friends had just been evacuated again. It turned out this was not because of the flooding, but because a gunfight broke out in their neighbourhood and a police bullet hit a gas meter, giving rise to fears of a serious gas leak.

Offers you can't refuse

I used to get offers in my inbox almost every day, to purchase little blue pills at low, low prices, or to lengthen my penis, or to find a nice milf in my neighbourhood.  Nowadays, this no longer happens. Since I retired, the algorithms that determine what offers I receive seem to have deleted sex and now target desires presumably deemed more appropriate for my age group:

"Full Set of Authentic Mink Eyelash Extensions by a Master Technician" (from WebPiggy)

I kid you not.

Understanding the Economist

I've been reading The Economist assiduously every week for a dozen years or so now. It is a wonderful magazine, full of reliable information, expert opinions and analysis; and it is beautifully written, clear, witty and unrelentingly clever. Although it is impeccably edited and can almost never be faulted for bad style or typos, ever so often I would come across a sentence that I had to read over two or three, or several, times, before I could make sense of it. This happens with most densely written prose and I thought nothing of it, apart from enjoying later the satisfaction one feels when a difficult puzzle has been solved.

Recently though, either because something has changed at The Economist, or because I am in some sort of linguistic decline, I seem to be finding sentences whose meaning eludes me pretty much completely, even after several rereadings. The other day I came across this, for example:

Very few of HMV's customers only ever purchase music from HMV.

"Very few only ever do it"? What does this mean? For some reason, I can understand the very similar "Most of HMV's customers only ever purchase music from HMV", which I think means they never buy music from anywhere else. So I imagine the original sentence means that few customers never buy music anywhere else. But now that sounds strange. I guess the majority do buy music elsewhere. Maybe it means "Most of HMV's customers also buy music elsewhere."

Headlines

It's amazing how much fascinating stuff is going on around the world. It's not just wars and revolts and murders and economic distress. There's much much more if you look carefully. Some of my favourite recent headlines [I am updating this from time to time]:

"Fake Cookie Monster faces charges, media storm in NYC." (USA Today)

"Kids who swallow magnets may pose health risk." (CBC) 

"Rainfall warnings ended following freak snowstorm, heavy rain, small tornado." (Calgary Herald, June 2012) 

"Swan linked to Chicago man's drowning." (CBC) 

"Air Canada pilot who put plane into nosedive was still groggy from nap" (National Post)

"My partner won't use sex toys to pleasure me anally." (The Guardian) 

"Jail violates blind sex offender's rights, judge rules." (CBC) 

"Camel gifted to French President mistaken for food, eaten by family." (National Post)  [You wonder which family...]

"Beaver bites man to death" (The Telegraph) 

"US sex offender posing as ex-football player spotted in Ontario" (CTV News) [Question: How do you spot a sex offender posing as an ex-football player?]

"Board told to review case of officer fired for urinating on colleague" (CBC)

"New app prevents incest in Iceland" (Toronto Sun)

"Mormon bishop uses Samurai sword to defend neighbor" (Toronto Sun) (More details: "He said that when he came face to face with the suspect, the man stopped in his tracks. 'He was kind of taken aback to have this sword drawn on him and he jumped back,' said Hendrix, who is a bishop in charge of his local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints congregation.")

"Dead Man Falls from Sky (Travel+Escape)" (Fox News; note category) 

"New Mexico teacher arrested after she locks boy in classroom and rapes him "(YourJewishNews.com (I kid you not!))

"Sewer capacity crisis may flush growth plans in Calgary's northwest (with map)"  (Calgary Herald) [Read all about the "Bowness sanitary trunk"]

"Giant head found floating in NY river not missing" (Wall Street Journal)

"'Ugly prostitute' reported to police. (BBC) ("West Midlands Police said they were contacted by the caller who said he "wished to report her for breaching the Sale of Goods Act".)

"Miss Utah wants U.S. to 'create education better'" (CBC)

"Brazilian man killed in his bed by falling cow" (BBC) ("The one-tonne cow was grazing on a hill behind the small house, in the town of Caratinga, when it stepped onto the asbestos roof, which collapsed under its weight.")

"Vatican offers 'time off purgatory' to followers of Pope Francis tweets" (The Guardian)

"Pregnant cat survives being shot several times with crossbow in Ontario; kittens die" (National Post)

"Texas is running out of execution drug" (Globe and Mail) 

"Ottawa doctor loses Order of Canada after sperm mix-ups" (CBC) 

"Fast moving snails spread deadly dog disease across UK" (BBC)

"I think my 54-year-old boyfriend is a virgin " (BBC)

"Great dads have smaller testicles, study suggests" (CBC) 

"Venezuela takes control of toilet paper factory to avoid shortage." (DigitalJournal.com) 

"Queen angry at police officers eating her Bombay mix, court hears" ["Palace officials sent a memo to royal protection officers warning them to “keep their sticky fingers out”, after Her Majesty noticed the snacks were disappearing, jurors at the Old Bailey were told."] (The Telegraph)

"Man tries to swap live alligator for pack of beers" (The Guardian) 

"UK's biggest' mud volcano worm habitat in Argyll loch" (BBC)

And not exactly headlines, but noteworthy quotes:

"The DoD DISA's ATO greenlights the Z10 and Q10 using BES 10 MDM on DoD networks," says BSG SVP in hope of a DoD RFP" (The Register)

"The rifle currently issued to our Arctic Rangers is the No. 4 mk1, which is a rear locking, controlled feed, cock-on-closing, box magazine fed bolt-action rifle." (National Post)

Ah, Bing!

I realize that translations from some languages are more difficult for an automatic translation service. Still. I have a Thai friend who posts on Facebook from time to time in Thai and I cannot understand any, or any part, of Bing's suggested translations. Here's the latest:

"Does anyone have a seat to eat drink shop, Pattaya, sriracha, bangsaen row instructions? Request for academic work in the store, read and drink alcohol, virtual fotlot. (Translated by Bing)"

Of course, Google Translate doesn't do much better, though its suggestion is refreshingly different from Bing's:

"Yet each one would eat the some Sriracha Pattaya recommend it. I read in the academic and spirits served throughout."

One thing that's strange to me is that not only do the English versions make no sense, but they are (wildly) grammatically incorrect. Surely some sort of standard syntactic structure in the final product should be part of the translation requirement.

It doesn't help much to translate into other languages either. Here's the French version proposed by Google Translate, quite close to the English:

Pourtant, chacun mangeait la Sriracha Pattaya certains le recommande. J'ai lu dans les milieux universitaires et les spiritueux servis tout au long.

Translations from Chinese, for which Bing and Google presumably have more data, are not much better:



Though, in support of Bing, at least the English here has a dreamy oriental hai ku cum Cat Stevens flavour.

For those eager to try their own hand at the Thai quoted above, here is the original: ใครมีีร้านนั่งกินดื่ม แถวบางแสน ศรีราชา พัทยา แนะนำบ้างครับ ขอแบบอ่านงานวิชาการในร้านได้และมีเครื่องดื่มแอลกอฮอล์เสริฟตล