It was a stormy afternoon today.
My beautiful wife snapped this uncanny image of the stormy sky a few hours ago.
No, it is not a black-and-white photograph. These were the actual colors.
What a planet we live on. Wow.
Oct 062024
Sep 272024
Allow me to let my imagination go wild.
Imagine a country in which access to health care — basic health care, no fancy machines, but competent, well-trained professionals — is easy. Want to see a cardiologist? Go to the local clinic, cardiology is on the third floor to the left, present your ID card and within 30 minutes, an assistant will call you by name and you’re talking to a cardiologist. Or any other specialist, for that matter. Oh, and if your child is sick, the pediatrician will make house calls. Free of charge, as all of this is covered by the public health insurance system.
Imagine emergency services that work. An ambulance system that, barring large-scale natural disasters, does not know the meaning of “level zero”. Emergency rooms that always have the capacity, at least in normal times, to quickly process patients and accommodate them.
Imagine hospitals that are well staffed and have surplus capacity. In particular, imagine mental hospitals that host many mental patients, including patients who, though not raving lunatics, are nonetheless incapable, for one reason or another, of leading proper lives independently, and would end up homeless, crippled with addictions or worse, if they were not institutionalized.
Imagine a country with no real homelessness. Sure, if you are in dire straits, you may not be able to find luxury accommodations, but you’ll not be left outside: If nothing else, a shared room will be available in a workers’ hostel or dormitory, with a bed and a wardrobe that you can call your own, but eventually, you might be able to get at least a tiny apartment, not much, just a bedroom, a toilet, a shower and a cooking stove, but still. Your place. One that will not be taken away so long as you pay the subsidized rent and don’t exhibit outrageous behavior.
Female dormitory at a downtown Budapest hostel for construction workers.
Fortepan / Peter Horvath, 1982
Imagine a merit-based system of tertiary education that does not cost a penny. Institutions that teach valuable skills in the sciences, engineering and the arts, not made-up diplomas that exist only to serve some ideological or political agenda. Institutions that kick you out if you do not meet minimum criteria, fail your exams, fail to complete your assignments.
Imagine a cheap public transit system that… just works. Reliably. The subway runs 20 hours a day, with all maintenance done, properly completed, during the overnight hours. Buses and trams arriving on time, a system only interrupted on rare occasions by major weather events or large accidents.
A pipe dream, you say? Maybe… except that what I am describing is the reality in which I grew up, in the goulash communism of behind-the-Iron-Curtain Hungary.
To be sure, things didn’t always work as advertised. There was no homelessness epidemic, but young people often ended up paying through the nose to live in sublet properties, often just a bedroom in someone else’s apartment. The health care system was nominally free, but people felt obligated to pay real money, a “gratitude”, under the table to compensate severely underpaid doctors and other health care professionals.
No, I do not want to pretend that life under communism was great. After all, I “voted with my feet”, leaving behind my country of birth, opting to begin a new life starting with nothing other than the contents of my travel bag and a few hundred dollars in my wallet in 1986. Nonetheless, my description of Kadar-era everyday life in Hungary reflects the truth. That really is the way the health care system, public housing, public transportation or tertiary education simply worked. Worked so well, in fact, we took them for granted.
The fact that these things today, in the capital city of a G7 country, namely Ottawa, Canada, are much more like pipe dreams, much farther away in reality than in Kadar’s communist dictatorship 50 years ago…
Homeless couple in recessed side entrance of Ottawa’s Rideau Centre.
Google Street View, July 2023
The mind boggles. Seriously, what the bleep is wrong with us?
Aug 142024
Back in gentler times, Parliament Hill here in Ottawa offered a unique attraction: a cat sanctuary.
Alas, the sanctuary is long gone. The cats were neutered and spayed many years ago, so their numbers were dwindling. And when the volunteer-supported sanctuary’s original caretaker passed away, the remaining cats were adopted and the sanctuary was abolished.
One of those cats was all-black Coal, adopted by a gentleman named Danny Taurozzi. Coal is 16 this year, still alive and kicking, the last remaining Parliament Hill cat. Coal is also a cancer survivor.
Cancer can kill cats quickly (as we sadly know all too well) so I am glad to learn that Coal is doing okay for now. I hope he has a few more years left, because when he closes his little eyes for the very last time, it will truly mark the end of an era.
Aug 072024
Having read comments from some Brits who wish to get rid of the monarchy in order to turn their country into a “democracy”, I despair. It is one thing that, in 2024, most folks are illiterate when it comes to science and technology but apparently, history and the social sciences are also badly neglected subjects.
My point, of course, is that these commenters confuse the form of government with the sources of power and the nature of the state.
A form of government may be a republic (res publica, i.e., governance in the name of the public) or a monarchy (monarkhia, rule of one), among other things.
However, both these forms of government can be autocratic (relying on the might of the state) vs. democratic (relying on the will of the people) insofar as the source of power is concerned.
And neither the form of government nor that source of power determine if the state will be liberal (that is, respecting basic rights and freedoms, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of enterprise, or the rule of law) or illiberal/authoritarian.
Midjourney’s response to the mostly Claude-written prompt, “Three regal anthropomorphic cats sitting on thrones, representing the orthogonal concepts of government. One cat wears a crown (monarchy vs republic), another holds a scepter and a ballot box (autocracy vs democracy), and the third balances scales of justice (liberal vs illiberal). The cats are arranged in a triangle formation against a backdrop of a stylized world map.”
To illustrate, let me offer a few examples. I live in Canada: a liberal, democratic constitutional monarchy. South of us is the United States: Also liberal and democratic, but a republic.
In contrast, the DPRK (North Korea) may serve as an example of a state that is an illiberal, undemocratic republic. Saudi Arabia is an illiberal, undemocratic monarchy.
Examples for other combinations are perhaps harder, but not impossible, to find. Orban’s Hungary, for instance, is rapidly converging on a state that is best described as illiberal, but democratic (the primary source of power is the people, not the might of the state) republic. I think some of the states in the Middle East (maybe Kuwait?) might qualify as relatively liberal, yet undemocratic monarchies.
These categories are not perfect of course, and do not cover all outliers, including theocracies, transitional governments or failed states. Still, I think it’s important to stress that the form of government, the source of power and the nature of the state are three fundamentally orthogonal concepts, and that all combinations are possible and do exist or have existed historically.
Understanding these distinctions is important. For instance, there are plenty of historical examples (e.g., the French Revolution devolving into the Reign of Terror, or the Russian revolution leading to the totalitarianism of the USSR) when the transition from monarchy to republic led to a significantly more autocratic regime. “Republic” is not a synonym for “democracy”.
Aug 052024
It’s a civic holiday Monday that feels like a Saturday, reminding me of an old Soviet-era science-fiction novel, Monday begins on Saturday, by the Strugatsky brothers. It’s also a rather gloomy Monday morning, so it’s time for me to grumble about a few things.
For instance, how politics infuses everything these days. I signed up to follow a Facebook group dedicated to brutalist architecture, which for some inexplicable reason, I like. The comments section in one of the first posts I saw rapidly deteriorated into political bickering, as to whether or not it was appropriate to repurpose one of the Nazi-era indestructible flak towers in Hamburg as a luxury hotel. Because you know, politics is everything.
Speaking of which, I saw another post elsewhere about employees of a large US company who, after being told how successful the company was last year, were informed in the same breath that the company will cut their pension plan contributions. Needless to say, there followed comments about the evils of capitalism. Having experienced both capitalism and one of its alternatives, a socialist economy with central planning, all I can say is that capitalism works most of the time until it doesn’t; but when it doesn’t, victims are ever so eager to replace it with something that never works instead.
Then there was this post at an online news site claiming that it is practically impossible to run an ethical AI company. Well, what can I say? If you are telling me that allowing machine learning algorithms to learn from accumulated human knowledge is unethical, then sure, you are absolutely right. Then again, I suspect that what mainly drives such complaints is blatant ignorance of how machine learning works in the first place.
OK, well, never mind that, there’s good news. A fusion energy breakthrough: Neutron impact on tokamak components uncovered. Er… Say again? You are telling me that after 70+ years of research, we are beginning to understand why, or how, a heavy neutron flux rapidly destroys test equipment in the lab? Isn’t that like, say, greeting it as a “steam turbine breakthrough” when a prehistoric tribe manages to draw a spark from slamming together two rocks?
Oh well. On mornings like this, I feel I am beginning to comprehend the mood of the late, great Kurt Vonnegut who once told the CBC’s Anna Maria Tremonti to go jump in a lake.
Aug 022024
The title of this blog post is used as the byline or catch phrase of the Canadian Centre for Experimental Radio Astronomy, a group operating a 12.8 meter radio telescope, a repurposed former NATO satellite communication facility, located in Carp, just outside of Ottawa.
One of the things they organize is a summer camp for students. Today, I was invited to talk to a small group of students, and indeed I did so, talking (mostly) about my work on the Pioneer Anomaly. It seemed like an appropriate topic, considering that detection and resolution of the anomaly was heavily dependent on radio science, specifically Doppler radio navigation.
It was fun, and my talk, I am told, was well received. I was also offered an opportunity to briefly tour the facility itself. It was fascinating, even though it was insanely hot inside the dome under the August sun. (I definitely needed a shower when I got back home.) The only memorable fly in the proverbial ointment is that I arrived late, thanks to a stupid disabled truck that blocked the Queensway, as a result of which it took forty minutes to get from Vanier Parkway to Parkdale. Fortunately, my hosts were understanding.
Aug 012024
I mentioned this before: A Mind Forever Voyaging, a computer game from the 1980s, one of the text adventures of the legendary Infocom, a game in which you play an AI protagonist, sent to simulations of the future to explore the factors behind the decay and collapse of society.
As you venture further and further into the future, things get worse. Inequality, homelessness, violence.
I was again reminded of this game this morning when I saw the news: New mortgage rules are in effect, allowing borrowers less down payment and longer terms. As a result, the monthly mortgate payment for a $500,000 home is “only” around $2,700, give or take.
Has it occurred to anyone that perhaps the problem is not on the borrowing side but on the supply side? That if we lack affordable housing, making it easier for people to borrow money that they cannot afford to repay is not really a solution?
The same newscast again mentioned an increasingly frequent problem, “renoviction”, when people are evicted from their rent-controlled apartments because the landlord renovates, only to learn that they can no longer find a place of residence that they can afford.
Also on the news: yet another old business (opened 1954) is shutting down at the ByWard Market. In their case, it’s the changing nature of the business post-COVID but for many others, it’s the deteriorating public safety. Increased police presence only pushes the problem elsewhere, like Centretown. I had to drive across town today to our car dealership, for an oil change. I saw panhandlers at every major intersection. Not too long ago, such sights were rare, dare I say even nonexistent here in Ottawa. Now, downtown sidewalks are full of homeless folks.
I have said it before when I lamented about AMFV here in my blog: It’s a piece of (interactive) fiction. Please do not mistake it for an instruction manual. Let’s come back from the brink before it is too late. Unless it is too late already…
Apr 222024
Can someone explain, by any chance, why, when moments ago I logged out of the Canada Revenue Agency Web site after filing an HST return, I was greeted with a German-language message announcing that my logout was successful?
I mean, a French-language message, sure. Inuit, sure. Aber Deutsch? Ja, ich kann ein bisschen Deutsch sprechen, aber woher wissen sie das?
Jan 282024
I first bought a hybrid (a Honda Civic) in 2004. I loved that car; it served us faithfully for 10 years. Our more recent Hondas were not hybrids, but the reasons were eminently practical: hybrids were in short supply, conventional gasoline cars were cheaper, and we use the car very little in any case, so…
Having said that, I certainly contemplated the idea of buying an all electric vehicle, but every time I think it through, I decide against it. Today, I saw a map that perfectly illustrates my lack of enthusiasm. Here it is:
This map shows the locations of supercharger stations where you’d have to stop for a 20-30 minute recharge, in order to complete a cross-country trip across the United States in a Tesla automobile.
In contrast, here’s a map of an actual trip I took in my Civic Hybrid back in 2005, along with the approximate locations where I stopped for gas (reconstructed from old receipts):
What can I say? I think EVs are great when you live in the suburbs and use your car for shopping and commuting to work. If I lived, say, in Kanata and commuted daily to work at, say, Place du Portage in Gatineau, purchasing an EV would make an awful lot of sense. But that’s not where we live or how we commute. We live on Ottawa Lowertown, which is to say almost downtown, we work at home, we use the car only occasionally, but as this example demonstrates, sometimes for lengthy road trips. EVs are not great for lengthy road trips. I am used to the idea of driving to Montreal Airport and back without worrying about stopping for gas. Or driving to Toronto non-stop.
And then, of course, there are the dreaded Canadian winters. It’s one thing to use waste heat from a gasoline engine to heat the interior of a car. It’s another thing to waste electric power stored in a battery for this, converting electricity inefficiently into heat, at the expense of range already reduced by the effect of cold weather on the batteries. And while heat pumps can help, there are no miracles when the outside air temperature is closer to -40 than -30 Centigrade, which is a not altogether uncommon occurrence (though it is certainly becoming less common) in these parts of Canada.
And then there’s the question of where the electric energy comes from. Renewables are okay, nuclear would be great. But too much of the electricity, even here in nuclear-rich Ontario, comes from natural gas fired plants. That’s not so great.
So for now, it’s either gasoline-powered or hybrid vehicles for us. EVs may be in our future, but I am not yet too keen on them, to be honest.
Nov 112023
The fate of animals in wars was often tragic. They served their human masters (and all too often, died with their human masters) faithfully.
One of the most touching war memorials I ever came across was the Animals in War memorial in Hyde Park, London, that I stumbled upon completely by accident, unaware of its existence. Not that the animals themselves care, but it’s nice that they are remembered. And as of 2012, Ottawa has its very own Animals in War memorial, in Confederation Park.
Neither of these memorials specifically mention cats, though, despite the fact that cats played no small a role in making the otherwise unbearable conditions a teeny bit more tolerable. Many were killed. Occasionally, they even helped save their masters’ lives.
Long story short, last night I asked Midjourney to depict a gentlecat, thinking about his lost comrades.
Oct 192023
Last night, I received notification from the CRA about an upcoming small tax refund.
When I logged on with my business account, it appeared to show that I had 3 unread messages, though there was a funny smudge before the ‘3’ in the notification icon.
When I clicked, I saw only one unread message. When I went back to the main screen, I now saw a ‘4’. That’s when I realized that the smudge was… a minus sign.
Indeed I had four messages shown in the mail interface, all read. So instead of counting the number of unread messages as a positive number, the UI showed the number of read messages as a negative number.
I have not yet received the refund. I hope that when (if?) it shows up in my bank account, it will have the correct sign.
Sep 052023
It is unfair! How dare social media companies and search engines profit from taking Canadian news content!
Fear no more: Bill C-18 is enacted and from now on, these evildoers will be mandated to pay for any news content they republish.
Oops, but there’s a fly in the proverbial ointment. It appears nobody asked the simplest of questions: What if they don’t?
Not “what if they don’t pay” but rather, “what if they don’t republish?”
This is capitalism after all. These companies are free to choose what purchases they make, what services they buy. Or, as the case might be, what services they opt not to buy.
“Unfair!” came the outcry. “A disaster for Canadian news providers!” Or even, “Irresponsible!” during some natural disaster or other emergency.
Wait. I thought what social media companies were doing was, ahem, bad for you? So you wanted them to either cease and desist or pay up?
Now you are telling me that all along, you were benefiting from social media and the traffic they directed to your content sites, and you don’t want to lose this?
Oh, but you also wanted some extra dough. Well, guess what. As the old proverb goes, he who chases two rabbits catches none.
To be clear, I don’t like Facebook/Meta. I am only marginally more fond of Google. But stupid is stupid, and Bill C-18 is the perfect legislative example of shooting oneself in the foot.
I find it mildly annoying that Facebook rejects posts that contain direct news media links but it doesn’t bother me much. And if Canadian news organizations want a better deal, perhaps they can ask the government to get rid of this stupid legislation first instead of doubling down, compounding stupidity with more stupidity.
Aug 182023
Yellowknife is not a large city by Ontario standards, but it is the capital city and the largest community in the Northwest Territories of Canada, with over 20,000 inhabitants.
And it is about to be evacuated entirely today, because of the imminent wildfire threat.
Yes, it’s a faraway place but it is still incredibly scary that tens of thousands of Canadians are uprooted, some taking their cars, some boarding evacuation buses or flights, fleeing their homes, traveling through landscapes that are like warzones, with burned buildings and burnt-out vehicles often in sight.
No, I won’t rant about climate change. There can be other contributing reasons behind this unprecedented wildfire season, though I bet climate change is by far the most significant contributor.
I wonder what prompted N.W.T. authorities to take this drastic step. I may be wrong but I have a feeling that the devastation in Maui was a wake-up call, and they wanted to avoid a similar disaster. Having said that, I sincerely hope that Yellowknife will be spared and its inhabitants can return in a few days.
Jul 202023
The new tonight is that notorious murderer Paul Bernardo was lawfully transferred to a medium security prison and shall remain there.
And that’s the way it should be.
No, I am not a friend of Bernardo. He deserves to remain behind bars for the rest of his life and then some.
But he also deserves to be treated exactly like any other criminal in Canada’s justice system. We don’t do mob justice in this country.
Keeping him in a maximum security establishment just to satisfy the public’s demands, just to further the political interests of those in charge would be an appalling thing to do, and I am very glad that Canada has not chosen this path.
Feb 132023
In her famous 1984 song, German singer-songwriter Nena sang about 99 balloons that trigger World War III.
Here is the ending of the song, along with my less-than-perfect translation:
| Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger Kriegsminister gibt’s nicht mehr Und auch keine DüsenfliegerHeute zieh’ ich meine Runden Seh die Welt in Trümmern liegen Hab ‘n Luftballon gefunden Denk’ an Dich und lass’ ihn fliegen |
Ninety-nine years of war Left no room for a victor There are no more war ministers Also no more fighter bombersToday as I took a stroll Saw a world, ruined by war There, I just found a balloon Thinking of you, I let it fly soon |
What can I say? A few more Chinese balloons over North America, a few more large-scale exchanges in Ukraine, and perhaps we’ll no longer need any war ministers anymore.
Jan 032023
So this is 2023. And suddenly I am reminded of the year 1973. A different world, 50 years ago, and not necessarily a happy one.
It was the year the Vietnam War officially ended for the United States. It was the year marking the beginning of the OPEC crisis.
The Apollo program was canceled but the United States launched Skylab, America’s short-lived space station.
Iconic buildings, including the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Sydney Opera House, were completed.
A tumultuous year in politics, 1973 saw the US Supreme Court decide in Roe vs. Wade, a decision that was overturned 49 years later by a conservative court majority. The year also marks the beginning of Watergate. Meanwhile, vice president Spiro Agnew resigns and Gerald Ford takes his place, paving his way to become America’s first, and to date only, unelected president.
NASA launches Pioneer 11; and before the year is out, Pioneer 10 (launched earlier, in 1972) reaches Jupiter.
But what makes this year especially memorable for me was that in the summer, my Mom and I traveled to Ferihegy Airport in Budapest and boarded a Swissair DC-8 taking us to Zurich, where we switched planes, boarding another Swissair flight, a DC-10, taking us to Montreal. We were visiting my aunt, here in Ottawa.
That visit was beyond incredible. Canada! Of course as a child, I was most impressed by superficial things, such as the number of channels even my aunt’s old black-and-white television set was able to pick up through a rooftop antenna. (Saturday morning cartoons!) Still, superficial or not, what I saw I suppose thoroughly inoculated me against communist propaganda. And, needless to say, this experience played a major role in my decision to leave Hungary 13 years later, eventually settling right here in Ottawa, a beautiful city that — thanks in no small part to that childhood visit — feels like my true hometown.
One of the many images from an extraordinary album by “Busman Extraordinaire” Paul A. Bateson on Flickr, showing Confederation Square as it appeared in the summer of 1973, when my Mom and I were visiting. I remember these sightseeing buses, imported from the UK, complete with right-hand drive.
And that visit was (almost) 50 years ago.
Sep 092022
In the wake of the passing of Elizabeth II, there are once again voices advocating that Canada should shed its “colonial past”, get rid of the institution of monarchy, and transform itself into a republic.
I think it’s an absolutely horrible idea. Why? Well… let me present the ten countries at the top of the 2021 Freedom in the World index:
| Finland | Parliamentary Republic |
| Norway | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Sweden | Constitutional Monarchy |
| New Zealand | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Canada | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Netherlands | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Uruguay | Presidential Republic |
| Australia | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Denmark | Constitutional Monarchy |
| Ireland | Parliamentary Republic |
Notice that seven out of these ten countries are constitutional monarchies (four of them, in fact, under the same monarch.)
Let me present, in contrast, the ten countries at the bottom of the list:
| Central African Republic | Presidential Republic |
| Tajikistan | Presidential Republic |
| Somalia | Parliamentary Republic |
| Saudi Arabia | Absolute Monarchy |
| Equatorial Guinea | Presidential Republic |
| North Korea | Socialist Republic |
| Turkmenistan | Presidential Republic |
| South Sudan | Federal Republic |
| Eritrea | Presidential Republic |
| Syria | Presidential Republic |
With the sole exception of Saudi Arabia (an absolute monarchy) all of them are republics.
I think these lists speak for themselves.
Thankfully, changing the Canadian constitution is a monumental task and I doubt any major political party would have the appetite to initiate something like this.
As for the “colonial past”, this excessive wokeness is beginning to sound almost as crazy as the convoy nutbags’ cries for “freedom”. Enough with the insanity already. Stop trying to turn this wonderful country into a battleground between two competing insane asylums.
Sep 082022
Queen Elizabeth II has died.
Aug 212022
Another thing I’ve been meaning to mention all the way back in May: This new national security policy document, produced by a task force at the University of Ottawa.
It is a sobering read, coming on top of earlier concerns raised by CSIS. The main theme is a degenerating international security environment. But a key concern is democratic backsliding in the United States.
In a section titled Democracy under siege, the authors note that “[w]e are witnessing a renewed contest of ideologies, pitting liberal democracy against autocracy”. Mentioning the protests in Ottawa and elsewhere early in the year, they observe that “[t]he protestors were non-state actors, some of whom advocated for the overthrow of the democratically elected government. […] The protests also involved widespread intimidation of the media […] It also quickly became apparent that there were ties between far-right extremists in Canada and the United States.”
Continuing, they assert that “[t]he protests also pointed to a broader and potentially existential question for Canada: the implications of democratic backsliding in the United States. Should scenarios of widespread political violence in our southern neighbour materialize, how should Canada respond? This question would have been fanciful only a few years ago, but it is very real today.”
So there we have it. Long a de facto guarantor of Canada’s national security, the United States has become a potential source of concern. How can Canada respond? The authors’ conclusions offer little comfort: “We live in an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world, a reality driven home by recent events like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the pandemic, and domestic protests against government health measures. Canada cannot isolate itself from the many and varied security threats facing the world. Our ‘fire-proof’ house has vanished.”
Jul 082022
Well, someone broke the Internet this morning.
To be more precise, someone broke a large part of the Internet in Canada. The network of Rogers has been down since about 4:30 this morning. When I woke up, I saw several e-mails from my own server complaining about its failure to connect to remote hosts; I also saw an e-mail from our family doctor’s office informing us that their phone lines are down and what to do in case of a medical emergency.
The fact that a major provider can have such a nationwide outage in 2022 is clearly unacceptable. Many are calling for the appropriate regulatory agencies to take action, and I fully approve.
In my case, there are backups and backups of backups. I am affected (we have no mobile data, and my highest-bandwidth network connection is down) but the outage also offered an opportunity to sort out an issue with network failover.
But I find it mind-boggling that more than 9 hours into the outage, Rogers still has no explanation and no ETA.
And now I accidentally hit Ctrl-Alt-Del while the KVM was connected to my main server instead of the device that I was trying to reboot. Oh well, no real harm down, the server rebooted cleanly, I just feel stupid.
All in all, this Friday is shaping up to be a rather unpleasant one. And here I thought I was looking forward to a nice, quiet, productive day.