The Squid Zone

The day after the day after Earth Hour

Otter: No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.

- National Lampoon's Animal House, 1978.

Earth hour came and went.  I did nothing out of the ordinary.  I was not an assclown in that I did not turn on extra lights like I heard some people were planning.

Ottawa Hydro reported a 4% drop in electricity usage for Earth Hour!  That's 4% of 1/24 of 1/365 of a year's worth of electricity.  In other words 4.6 one-millionths of the city's annual power usage.  Let me write that out for you:  0.0000046 times the annual electricity usage.   If you were a millionaire and saved that percentage in a year, it would be $4.60.  It is, for all practical purposes, nothing... ZERO.  So let's drop any pretense that Earth Hour made any energy savings of value.

But, my critics say, the purpose of Earth Hour was to raise AWARENESS.  Ok, let's explore that.  What did anyone learn, awareness wise, that they didn't know last Friday?  Did anyone really not know that turning off lights saves electricity?  More to the point, how many people now feel that they've done their deed for the year - they've helped save 4% of an hour's electricity!  So today they climbed into their Chrysler Le Behemoth and used 5 gallons of gas driving in from Barrhaven to work, and they're not even going to think about this stuff until Earth Hour next year.

Certainly, nobody was educated in the productive things that can be done to save energy or the environment.  Let's face the cruel, hard fact: Western civilization cannot live in the dark without lights or electricity, so turning off lights for an hour is a completely meaningless gesture.  Realistically, nobody is going to turn back the clock to a time of oil lanterns and huddling around the fireplace, and Earth Hour promoters never did offer any real AWARENESS about how to save energy in the modern world.

I, however, will offer some true awareness that will strike at the very heart of the issue.  Here are Darin's hints at how people in Ottawa can make a difference and save energy without the Earth Hour bollocks:

1. Ottawa needs to deploy realistic, effective mass transit, and the citizens of Ottawa need to use it.  "Throw on more buses" is NOT the answer for a battery of reasons, but climate and congestion are two of them.  Like it or not, taxes will have to be raised to pay for this.  If we don't suck it up now, we'll be telling our kids to suck it up later.  We don't need more idiots on bicycles on icy winter roads, either.  We need mass transit.

2. Related to the first point, people who live beyond the greenbelt need their taxes jacked up to cover the cost of the extension of services (like transit) to their remote locations.  Sorry folks, living in suburbia puts a burden on everyone else.  We need your SUVs off the road, and we need you to pay for the environmentally damaging infrastructure extensions that support your suburban paradise.

3. Denser city development.  If more people lived within walking distance of work we'd not only improve the environment, we'd have less fat people too!  We'd need LESS mass transit if less people needed to be transported. There'd be less road congestion, less environmental damage due to suburban development. Hell, with people actually living downtown, Ottawa might even develop some fun!

4. We need smaller families.  Less new people being born means less energy consumption for all time.  That means we also need social change to go with a reducing population.  We can't depend on unbounded growth to sustain our social programs, for example, because we simply can't sustain the environment with an ever increasing number of consumers being squeezed out.  Think of all the energy you have used / will use from birth to death.  Think of all the environmental impact that you have had and will have.  When you choose not to have a child, you're saving that much energy and impact, plus that much times all future descendants.  Wow, talk about doing something positive for the climate, the environment, and the world!  I know this is a strange thing, but if you're truly concerned about the environment, this should be a factor in your family planning decision.

Earth Hour didn't tell anyone this sort of stuff.  Earth Hour just let people who aren't really interested in this stuff make a useless gesture and feel good about themselves.  To me, that's a negative thing because it doesn't address the problem - in fact, it prolongs the problem.

What am I doing for Earth Hour?

Tonight at 8 PM, if you haven't heard (and you'd have to be deaf, blind, and travelling in space because there are posters and announcements everywhere... babies are coming out of vaginas right now holding Earth Hour signs) is Earth Hour.  People are supposed to turn off their lights for an hour in a great big group-hug of climate change lust.

Some people have asked what I'll be doing.  Well, here's the answer:  Nothing.  I won't be turning off my lights.  In fact, it will be business as usual for me.  The reason for this is quite simple actually - Earth Hour is naught but hype - a viral outpouring of pseudo-concern for the environment that will disappear into the ether at 9 PM tonight.

And I'm not just being curmudgeonly here.  It really is a waste of time.  Yes, turning out some lights will save some electricity.  I can't deny that.  But, and it's a big but...

1. Where did all the electricity and environmental damage come from to print up those ubiquitous posters announcing the impending Earth Hour?  Posters don't grow on trees do they?  Oh yes, THEY DO!  So to tell everyone to save this electricity, we cut down a shitload of trees.  Even if, by some miracle, all the posters are made of 100% recycled paper, it still cost electricity and the use of toxic chemicals to make those posters.  Starting tomorrow, we'll have to get rid of all those posters too.  At best they'll be hauled away by big trucks for recycling, adding some greenhouse gas emissions and consuming fossil fuels in the process.  Subtract the electricity used to promote Earth Hour from the energy saved and chalk up some environmental damage in a second column.

2. Nobody seriously believes that all these Earth Hour folks are going to sit there, idle, in the dark?  Of course not.  A goodly lot of them are going to get in their cars and go somewhere that's lit, or they'll operate battery powered lights, or they'll flip on the TV anyway.  Subtract from the energy saved the electricity used to recycle all the batteries used. In the second column add more environmental damage and CO2 emissions.

3. What happens around 9 PM?  Almost certainly, thousands of Earth Hour sycophants will be flipping their lights back on!  Let's be honest here, pretty much nobody is going to suddenly discover the merits of sitting around in the dark.  When those lights come back on in a short period of time, it creates a surge - a sudden drain on the power grid.  Power generating companies and suppliers HATE that.  It's hard on equipment and generally dangerous.  In a new column, write in "increased risks".

4. Does anyone seriously believe that the generators STOP for Earth Hour?  Of course they don't.  The nuke plants will continue splitting atoms, the coal plants will continue burning coal, etc.  Instead of the energy coming out, and being used as electricity, it will merely dissipate into cooling towers as heat.  It may SEEM like a bunch of energy is being saved, but in fact, it won't be doing anything!  In Ontario, the same rate of unranium, oil, and natural gas is going to be consumed because one hour makes no real difference.  Chalk up some more environmental damage.

The illusion of helping is worse than not helping at all.  When you participate in Earth Hour, you might get that cuddlyfuzzy feeling of helping the environment, but you're not... all you're doing is kidding yourself.  In fact, when you factor in all the costs of Earth Hour, you might even be making things worse.

MC Dawkins strikes back!

This is starting to circulate like a virus, so I'll do my part to spread it around.  It's the Atheist Rap!

Thanks to Bad Astronomy for pointing this out.

The real use for hadrons

Ok, it's a physics joke:

xkcd comics

If you don't get it, it would be too hard to explain.  Many of the people who read this will get it.

For background, look up Large Hadron Collider, and Higgs boson.

A disturbing mental image?

Being male and pathologically unable to read instruction manuals, particularly GAME instructions, I found it necessary to get my friend's 10-year-old daughter to show me how to play Dance Dance Revolution on the Wii.  Beth wanted the thing but was also unable to puzzle out the game mechanics.  In any case, the little girl schooled us.  When nobody was around, I tried it for myself and actually did OK, considering that dancing has never really been my thing.

It was strangely fun, although I got an "E" on the lowest level, and didn't manage half the score that the little girl did yesterday.

On the flip side, I probably do better at Unreal Tournament than she would, so it all works out.

Go Leafs Go!

This is classic Toronto Maple Leafs action

Slow Scan TV and drooling gits...

It's not something I'd normally do, but this is an event worthy, I think, of being put here as well as my amateur radio blog...

Of late I've been playing a bit with slow scan TV.  This mode, for the non-amateur reading this, is used by amateur radio enthusiasts to send single pictures to each other, usually via HF radio.

In the olde days, you'd need a camera at your end and a display of some sort at the other end, and some electronics to decode it.  In theory, one could still do SSTV that way, but the more usual way is to use a computer and software hooked up to your radio.  The still images are now JPG files.

It's an interesting mode to demonstrate amateur radio to others as well because the picture slowly filling the screen is a real attention grabber.

As stated previously, I also volunteer at the Canada Museum of Science and Technology and operate the radio station there: VE3JW.  I had noticed that there was software for SSTV so I decided this weekend to put up a new demo - instead of the digital modes that I normally use, I'd run up some SSTV.  By coincidence, there was also a contest on, so there were a LOT of nice images coming in nearly constantly and it made for a really interesting display on the big screen for visitors to watch and ask questions about.

Interesting, that is, until some American yahoo had to transmit a scantily clad woman.

Now don't get me wrong - at the most basic level, I have no problem with scantily clad women.  I encourage less clothing wherever feasible.  However, amateur radio SSTV is NOT an appropriate place for it.  It was fortunate that I noticed it quickly enough to get it off the screen before anyone complained.

I'd like to thank the operator who sent that picture for personally embarrassing me in front of the public, for embarrassing the national science museum, and for making amateur radio operators look like immature asses.  I hope it was worth it in your quest for that important contest QSO.  I'm going to be polite and not publish the callsign... this time.  You know who you are.

I can't believe it's actually necessary to screen for this kind of material in amateur radio.  There are so many other venues to pass those kinds of pictures around, do amateur radio hobbyists really need to do it there too?  I'd expect better of a high school student, let alone an adult.  I was talking to another operator of the museum station and he, too, mentioned that he stopped showing SSTV because of these kinds of pictures.  Thanks to the drooler population of amateur radio, we can't demonstrate something really cool for fear that some softcore porn image will come up.  Just what I need to show mom, dad, and their two grade-school kids who stop by the display.  Nothing like some half-dressed tart on the screen to leave a good impression about amateur radio.

So, SSTV operators, grow up and leave your nudie pics on your hard drive.  Send that crap via email if you must move the pics around.  You never know who might be watching.

Internet safety - how to protect your children

By now, everyone in Canada has likely seen this article: Kingston man gets 3 years in international child porn case.  If you don't want to read the whole article, here is the salient bit:

Police and prosecutors said Bedford would entice young girls or young women [ed: some as young as 10, it doesn't say the oldest, but presumably teenaged] to show their breasts on a webcam, and then have them perform more explicit acts by threatening to e-mail those images to friends and family.

Wow.  Scary stuff isn't it?  Although it's a bit less scary knowing that Mark Bedford, the reprehensible troll that he is, will get three years to think about the error of his ways while Bubba plays "dock the space shuttle" with his behind.

So what's this about?  Why is this worthy of an article?

It's worthy of an article because I've already heard people holding this guy and his perversion up as an example of why we need more policing of the internet, why the internet is unsafe, why the world is going to Hell without even the courtesy of a handbasket, etc.  As a person who works in security, I want the relevant lessons to be learned from this sordid affair and I want the hysteria and the BS to die a quick, painful death.

Let me get one thing straight up front.  Mark Bedford is a loathesome creature and nothing that follows in this article is intended to justify or otherwise promote or support anything he did.  Frankly, I don't think he got ENOUGH time in jail, but leniency in our justice system is a topic for another day.

Now, that said, let's look at the reality of the situation.  See that first sentence in the quote?  Mr. Bedford would ask these girls to expose themselves on camera, then using the existence of those pictures as leverage, blackmail the girls into more explicit performances.  Parents, here comes the clue train:

If your teen or PRE-TEEN daughter can be convinced to expose herself on camera voluntarily (which is how this guy got started every time... I'm talking about before the blackmail part) then YOU HAVE FAILED AS A PARENT.  That's right, it's not Bedford's fault that some 12-year-old was flashing her tits for giggles on a camera.  What kind of parents would raise a child who would even think of doing such a thing just because someone asked?  It's not a failure of the internet or of law enforcement that some random pervert could do this sort of thing.  It's wholly a parenting failure from the get-go.  The simple fact is, if those girls had been brought up with so much as a grain of modesty or common sense, they wouldn't have been subject to the initial exposure and couldn't be blackmailed later.  I'm not blaming the girls, I'm blaming the parents who let their children down.  I'm blaming the parents who didn't teach their children that maybe it's not ok to be naked on the internet for ANYONE.

Perhaps I'm just that strange, but I can't imagine that, in the 70's when I was a teenager, any 10-15 year old could be convinced to pose for naked pictures without some kind of credible threat of (or actual) physical force.  Why would a girl that age today think it's OK to perform sexual acts on the internet just because someone - ANYONE - asked?  Remember, I'm talking about the initial encounters here, not the blackmailed stuff.  If the children were brought up with more self-respect, those initial encounters would have been largely prevented and Mr. Bedford would have come up pretty well empty handed.

If you're doing your job as a parent, those initial encounters with the young girls would have gone like this:

A_pretend_15_guy_who_is_really_a_23_pervert: Hey, UR sexy.  Show me what you got? kthxplz?
12andYummy: No.
A_pretend_15_guy_who_is_really_a_23_pervert: Y not? plz plz plz plz
12andYummy: No. get a life.
A_pretend_15_guy_who_is_really_a_23_pervert: Bitch
12andYummy: Perv <disconnect>

And that would have been the end of it.

OK, smart guy, how would you have prevented this?

There are a few things that could be done that would all but eliminate this kind of predation (and many other kinds of sexual predation).  In order to make these things effective requires a big dose of PR:  Parental Responsibility.

1. Recognize that it's your responsibility - That's right parents, get it through your skulls that the world doesn't owe you and your kids a squeaky clean place to frolic... you have to carve out that place from the sludge of reality.  It's your responsibility to keep your kids safe and bring them up with the skills, knowledge, and indeed, the common sense to avoid the Bedfords of the world.  You can't do it through legislation, and you can't do it through NetNanny.  You do it through direct supervision.  You do it by being involved in your children's lives.   If you ever think "wow, I wouldn't do that when I was that age." then why are you letting your kids do it now?

2. Supervise your children's computer use - And I don't mean that you install keyboard loggers and censorship software like NetNanny.  That sort of thing is underhanded, sneaky, and a cop-out.  How happy would you be if your boss had a hidden keylogger on your work PC?  Odds are you wouldn't like it.  You expect that if your employer has a problem with your network use that they'll be honest and clear about it, right?  Why not treat your children the same way.  The simplest way to monitor your children's computer use is to make sure the computer is used in an environment where it is difficult to misuse the computer.  That's right - get the computer OUT of your child's bedroom or other place where the child can use it outside of supervision and INTO a public place where use can be monitored.  It's easy for a 12-year-old to show off the goods when the computer and the web cam are in her bedroom and she can shut the door.  It's a lot harder when the computer and web cam are in the rec room or the dining room and anyone can walk in.  It's easy for your son to surf up a storm of porn when he's in the safety of a closed room, but you can bet he won't be visiting the Big Juggs site when you're 15 feet across the room.

Are you afraid your kids will "accidentally" see porn?  So what?  Odds are you "accidentally" saw porno mags when you were a kid and you turned out OK... why can't you afford your children the benefit of the doubt that you got?  That's just a little reminder about reality.

3. Teach your children self-respect - You grew up knowing not to expose yourself just because someone asked you to.  Why don't your kids know that?  It's not a matter of teaching some Victorian morality about nudity, it's just a matter of teaching them self-respect.  A self-respecting person doesn't make naked pictures of herself just because some random idiot asks her to.  With a little bit of self-respect, a lot of predatory behaviour toward children is rendered impotent.  To tie this back to a previous point (#1 above)... your children learn self-respect when you respect them.  Show your kids some trust, show your kids that you value them as people, and show your kids that you respect yourself and they won't be seeking the kind of reinforcement that comes from having some asshole in the internet fawn over their naked nether regions.  When you spy on your kids with hidden cameras, GPS reporting phones, keyboard loggers, and so forth, you're really sending the message that you think your kids are scum who need to be spied upon.  (Note to employers: This applies in the adult world too.  When you use keyboard loggers, GPS reporting, hidden cameras and so forth you're sending a clear message that you think your employees are scum who need to be spied on... same message).

Teaching your children self-respect means other things too.  It means teaching them that it isn't appropriate to nickname yourself "SexyHo" in a chat room when you're 12.  It means teaching them not dress, talk and act like a streetwalker.  It means teaching them that the world doesn't have to run on sex and that there's better, healthier ways to get ahead than selling themselves - it's a very short step from flashing your tits for anyone who asks to flashing your tits for people who offer to pay.

There you have it.  Three steps to keeping your children safe on the Internet:  Recognize that it is your responsibility; Supervise your children's computer use; Teach your children self-respect.  Do those things and you'll put the Mark Bedfords of the world out of business in a hurry, and you'll do it without messing up the world for everyone else.

The largest insect in Canada

Back in January, Gord posted this link to the 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World.  This got me thinking about what the biggest bugs in Canada might happen to be.  Now there's not really a web site that has Canadian bugs listed by size, so Google wasn't a lot of help.  So, armed with the knowledge that the Canadian Museum of Nature has an insect exhibit, I contacted their question folks with this:

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Looking at all the usual sources, I am stumped, and I am hoping someone at the Museum knows the answer to this.  I am trying to find out what the largest insect in Canada is.  By “in Canada” I mean essentially indigenous – I’m sure museums such as yours have many large foreign bugs J  But if I were to wander the countryside, what is the biggest insect I could find?

I suppose “largest” is a bit loaded since insects can be very long and skinny, or short/fat/heavy so there might not be a good “the biggest insect is

” answer, but any guidance you could provide would be helpful.  If the information exists as a WWW link somewhere and you can provide that, I’d appreciate it (although I’ve been through google with many search terms and haven’t found anything discussing this).

Thank you for your time

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The museum was quick to get back to me, and I received first a response from Richard Martin to let me know that my query had been received and referred to the research division.  About an hour later, I received this reply from Robert Anderson at the museum:

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Hey folks:  Questions like this are usually the subject of a bet of some sorts so lets see if I can help out.  LOL.  You are right in that we have some huge insects here at the museum and you are also right in that the question is difficult to answer since largest could mean longest (do we include wings?) or the heaviest. Also, do we mean larval stages (e.g., caterpillars) or just adults.  Here are my thoughts and I’ll let you guys decide the winner.

The Giant Water Bug Lethocerus americanus is probably the largest (heaviest) non-moth in Canada.  The Green Darner dragonfly, Anax junius, is probably the longest non-moth.  The heaviest and largest insect would have to be the Cecropia Moth, Hyalophora cecropia.  Certainly the large green, fleshy caterpillar would be the heaviest insect in Canada.

Hope this helps out.

Take care,  Bob

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My mother will be pleased to note that none of the mentioned critters are spiders, despite the healthy size of these things that live in Ontario and are the largest spider, I think, that lives in Canada (don't click that, mom).  Bob also gave me permission to use this stuff in a blog post, and I thought that there wasn't much that could get rid of the "I'm under 4m of snow" blues like some gigantic bugs.  So, for your viewing pleasure, I have found pictures of the various critters mentioned above.  In all cases, pictures are taken from the reference link in the title.

The Giant Water Bug - an unpleasant critter that runs to about 6.5 cm

The Green Darner Dragonfly - over 7 cm long, 11 cm wingspan

and the prize-winner... the Cecropia Moth and its caterpillar: (I've seen cecropia moths bigger than the one in the picture below)

My thanks to the Canadian Museum of Nature, Bob, and Richard.

407 cm

As of 8 March, we've had 407 cm of snow fall since the first snow in November (I added up the monthly totals from the Environment Canada web site).  For the stone-age folks who don't use metric, that's 13' 4", or an amount of snow about equal in height to a standard semi-trailer.  Due to the obstacles in my yard, my back yard is covered to a depth of a bit less than 1/3 of that.  In the front, however, the ever-shaded north-side of my lot combined with the dumping of snow from my driveway has created a snow bank that is nearly 2m tall and most of the lawn is covered in about 1.5m of snow.

Here is a picture with my Murano from BEFORE Sunday's snow (basically, add 30ish cm of white on top of what you see here):

 

Ugh.  I want to move back to British Columbia.