Canada – Spinor Info

Crazy uncle

Mar 192025

Canadians have long viewed our American neighbor as the proverbial crazy uncle. Eccentric, unhinged, loud and obnoxious, crashing parties and family reunions, but ultimately tolerable because his intent, despite all appearances to the contrary, is not malicious and there are no covert motives behind his behavior, however unpleasant it can be at times. And he has his charms, too.

But then imagine the same crazy uncle showing up one day, crashing his vehicle into yours in your own driveway. Out he jumps, berating you, threatening you with a lawsuit. Glancing at your teenage daughter, he causally mentions that he also feels entitled to rape her.

Even if he shows up the next day offering the most profound apologies for his behavior; even if all his relatives came to his defense, assuring you that his more-unhinged-than-usual conduct was just the result of a very bad day, that he didn’t mean any of it, that he is of course willing to pay for all the damage he caused; none of that matters, the relationship is irreparably harmed. It will likely take not years but decades, if it ever happens, before you’d welcome him at your home again as a visitor.

This is how many feel here in Canada, after witnessing the United States over the course of the past two months: specifically the accusations, the threats, the insults thrown in our direction.

When I asked Midjourney to produce images depicting the United States as the proverbial crazy uncle, I did not specifically mention Trump. My instructions were simple: “A satirical caricature, portraying the United States of America, as Canada’s proverbial crazy uncle who just crossed the line and did something unforgivable. –chaos 15 –stylize 200 –weird 300” Those parameter settings were only slightly higher than the default, to produce images of somewhat greater variety. This was one of many results with that recognizable visage.

Three plots, two stories

Canada, Commerce, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Mar 132025

Look what Donald J. Trump, business genius, is doing to the US economy with his on-again, off-again tariff wars, antagonizing and alienating America’s most important allies and trading partners. This is now officially a “correction”, I am told.

Never mind, surely the targeted economies of those nasty trading partners, “taking advantage” of Trump’s America, are also suffering. Well, they do, but…

I guess that trained economists, financial experts will tell me not to jump to hasty conclusions. The differences may be due to many factors, including the fact that the Toronto index is enumerated in a different currency and all that. They’re right, of course. Nonetheless, I think this is telling. Yes, Canada’s main index is also down. But it’s still doing better than it did 6 months ago, unlike its major American counterparts.

But surely, what Donald “stable genius” Trump is doing to the US economy (not to mention NATO, the Western alliance, the rules-based world and all that) must be good by definition, right? The Leader is never wrong; those who think otherwise are enemies of the people, right?

Krasnov

Canada, Politics No Responses »

Mar 062025

Back in more innocent times, in January 2016, a year before he was inaugurated for his first term as President of the United States, Trump boasted that “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

Only now do I realize the real meaning behind that statement. What he actually meant was, “I could stand in the middle of the Oval Office and commit high treason and I wouldn’t lose voters.”

For instance, today we learned that Trump will revoke the legal status of Ukrainian refugees. Each and every time I thought I saw the full depth of the depravity of Trump and his entourage (including Elon Musk), they surprise me some more. A few examples (just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, really, there is plenty more):

Trump’s treatment of America’s neighbors and closest allies, Canada and Mexico;
Trumps contempt towards America’s European allies and NATO in particular;
Threats to use force if necessary to annex Greenland, reoccupy the Panama Canal zone and turn Canada into the “51st state”;
The assault on press freedom, including Trump’s treatment of The Associated Press;
Installing loyalists of highly questionable credentials as key members of his cabinet;
Loyalty tests for other officials concerning the “stolen election” of 2020;
The firing of top military brass;
The “non-employment” of Elon Musk at DOGE, without a security clearance, an official mandate, or Congressional oversight;
The deplorable treatment of Ukraine’s wartime president, Zelenskyy, in the White House;
Cutting off military aid and critical intelligence to Ukraine;
Halting Cyber Command’s operations concerning Russia;
Voting in the United Nations on the side of Russia, North Korea, Eritrea and similar regimes;
Plans to turn Gitmo into a concentration camp for up to 30,000 asylum seekers;
Destroying USAID, America’s premier instrument of “soft power” abroad;
Indiscriminate firing of critical federal workers, including those maintaining America’s nuclear arsenal.

I know that our existing world order, Pax Americana, is kaput. The only thing I don’t know yet is whether Canada still has any viable options left to maintain our independence, our economic well-being, our territorial integrity, or if we are doomed already.

Krasnov, incidentally, is the presumed nickname given to Trump when he was recruited by the KGB in 1987, according to an uncorroborated accusation by Alnur Mussayev, a former Soviet security official. Whether or not he was indeed recruited, I do not know. But his present-day actions speak louder than any dubious accusations concerning his past.

United Kingdom

Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Mar 042025

I just had a brilliant idea*, something to help Canada as we are threatened by Trump’s tariffs, his calls to annex Canada as the 51st state, not to mention the tangible dangers represented by our militaristic northern neighbor Putinistan.

Would our British friends object terribly if Canada asked to rejoin the United Kingdom, turning the realm into the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Canada?

I admit that my crazy proposal is based on enlightened self-interest: The UK is a powerful country, with a strong military that also possesses a capable nuclear deterrent. But I think the UK would also benefit substantially from this newfound unity. Canada has a lot to offer, including land, resources, industries, and more. And we wouldn’t even have to change much… after all, we already share the same King, and, well, I’m sure our British friends would be willing to accommodate at least a small addition to the Union Jack…

Oh, Quebec, you ask? Well, the UK today is not the UK of the past. I suspect that a future United Kingdom that includes Canada would not only welcome français québécois as an important language along with Irish, Scots, Welsh and a host of other languages, the new realm would also fiercely defend the cultural integrity, independence, distinctness of the society of la belle province.

Vive le Royaume-Uni de Grande-Bretagne, d’Irlande du Nord et du Canada!

*I was inspired in part by the Privy Council’s role in deciding The Persons Case of 1929 and the consequent Living tree doctrine. If the Privy Council—arguably one of the more conservative institutions on the planet—could be so forward-thinking back in 1929, we may not be in bad company, should my proposal take hold.

Banning books

Books, Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Mar 022025

This morning, I stumbled upon an article in The Walrus, a Canadian newsmagazine, about book bannings… in Canada. It appears to be a robust, well-informed piece. It tells us, among other things, that book banning in libraries is popular on all sides of the political front. “Think of the children!” seems to be a common theme, whether it is conservatives trying to protect young readers from what they perceive as “grooming” or progressives trying to weed out works that they find “offensive”.

The CBC also had a recent report about the banning of books, but their reporting appears to be more concerned about bans specifically targeting “2SLGBTQ+” literature. (Frankly, I find this ever growing acronym itself a painfully transparent exercise in virtue signaling — the CBC demonstrated my concern when they failed to use the acronym consistently themselves, writing “2SLGBTQ” later in the same article, only to switch to “LGBTQIA+” when quoting another report.)

Meanwhile, The Walrus points out that censorship often has the opposite effect: E.g., when an attempt was made on Salman Rushdie’s life, sales of The Satanic Verses soared on Amazon. (Speaking from personal experience: I’d not have obtained, and read, a copy of Orwell’s 1984 in, well, 1984, had it not been on the list of unwelcome literature by communist authorities in my native Hungary.)

And of course one also has to wonder, as The Walrus does, if books are still relevant in the Internet era, when much of the written word we consume these days comes in forms other than traditional books or even electronic editions.

A scary map

Canada, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Feb 232025

Here is a map I just created using R, utilizing an OECD housing prices data set. Specifically, the price-to-income ratio, which is to say, how (un)affordable housing can be in various leading economies.

Why do I find this map scary? Well, the value of “100” represents the OECD average back in 2015. That was high enough already. Things have become a lot worse since.

Here in Canada, housing is now 38% more unaffordable than it was nine years ago. Canada is near the top of this list; only Portugal is worse (49%). The United States is not far behind, at 29.3%. And it’s not like housing was terribly affordable in any of these places back in 2015 either.

To be sure, there are a few countries where housing has become somewhat more affordable: Finland, France, Romania, Sweden are a few examples. One has to wonder though about the reasons. Is it the closeness of Russia, as in the cases of Finland or Romania? Is it a failed immigration policy, as in Sweden? Or perhaps political uncertainty, as in France?

In any case, in the majority of OECD countries both in North America and Europe (shown in my map) and elsewhere, the situation is a lot less tenable now than a decade ago, and things are not about to change direction.

When something as basic as housing becomes out of reach for many, we know we have a problem. In case anyone is wondering why populism is gaining traction everywhere, here’s the answer.

Flag day

Canada, Politics 1 Response »

Feb 162025

I am almost out of time, but not quite: it’s still February 15 in much of Canada.

The 60th anniversary of the first unfurling of our Maple Leaf flag.

Now I don’t usually engage in patriotic-nationalistic bull-baloney, and it’s not usually a Canadian thing in any case.

However, in light of our American “friends” declaring a trade war on our country and expressing a desire to annex Canada as the “51st state”, I feel the need, really the strong urge, to do so.

Allow me to advocate again that Canada needs a strong, independent national defence capability, and that we must seriously contemplate, as a one-time participant in the famed Manhattan project, re-establishing ourselves as an independent nuclear power with a credible nuclear deterrent and do so before it’s too late. What else can we do to guarantee the souvereignty of an underpopulated country with highly desirable natural resources, sandwiched between rabid warmongering neofascist Putinistan and the mad personality cult of Trumpland?

Vive le Canada!

Canada, History, Politics No Responses »

Feb 032025

How did we get here, asks the CBC rhetorically, as they recount the events that led to Trump’s announcement of across-the-board tariffs on Canadian imports to the United States.

On Nov. 5, Americans chose Donald Trump to be their next president. Twenty days later, Trump announced, via a post to his own social-media platform, that he would apply a 25 per cent tariff to all products imported into the United States from Canada and Mexico — a response, he claimed, to the fact that people and illegal drugs were entering the United States from those two countries.

At least in the case of Canada, this was an irrational justification. Seizures of fentanyl at America’s northern border represented 0.08 per cent of all fentanyl seized by American officials in the last fiscal year. The number of people entering the United States through Canada has also been a fraction of the total number of people entering via Mexico.

They also wonder if this might be a shot in the arm for Canadian patriotism. Damn right it will be and for a damn good reason:

But if American democracy continues down a dark path, not being American might be more than an argument against annexation. In that case, as Rob Goodman, an author and professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, has written, “Canadian distinctiveness” might be not a “vanity object,” but an “essential safeguard of Canadian democracy.”

Again and again, I am reminded of the television adaptation of The Handmaid Tale, depicting a diminished, yet independent Canada where life remains reasonably normal even as south of the border, a country that no longer calls itself the United States of America but is renamed The Republic of Gilead, chooses totalitarianism. No wonder that even our cats seem to be concerned…

Some economists worry that fighting back against Trump’s tariffs is a losing proposition. I don’t think so. Canada’s economy is small compared to that of the US but not that small, and we have something America does not: the resilience of a people determined to fight back against a former friend who so blatantly betrays us. Yes, we will pay more at the grocery counter. We know that. Yes, American goods will disappear from shelves: in fact we will help remove them. But if this is how Trump thinks he can coerce Canada to become the “51st state”, I think I speak for the overwhelming majority of my compatriots when I respond with a resounding (even if un-Canadian in its directness) fuck off. Va chier.

In short: This is not a joke anymore. What Trump is doing is how a country treats its worst enemies, not its friends. If Trump thinks Canada is a pushover, I think he’s in for an even nastier surprise than his best buddy in Moscow when he attacked Ukraine. Let’s hope we never find out just how tough and resilient Canadians will be when backstabbed.

Friends of mine used to think (perhaps not anymore) that I went stark raving mad when I suggested that Canada should rapidly initiate an independent weapons program and build a credible nuclear deterrent. We have the know-how, the materials, we have the technology and the means. As to why? Consider this is a great, rich, but underpopulated country, sandwiched between tyrannical, warmongering Putinistan across the North Pole to the north and the rabid personality cult of Trumpland to the south, and you have your answer.

Reunification

Canada, History, Politics 2 Responses »

Jan 302025

Repeatedly, I see questions on Quora, asking why Canada resists Trump’s suggestion of becoming the 51st state. Why bother going through the likely hardships instead of giving in to Mr. Trump’s will?

Very well, allow me to offer my own contribution, to help the process along. Here, I designed a nice voting slip that could be used for this purpose. The date, of course, can be easily changed.

I must confess that the idea is not original. I had help, an elegant historical precedent that, I think, is perfectly suitable for this purpose:

I hope my contribution is received in the same spirit in which it is offered, and perhaps thanked by a nice, “from the heart” gesture (with the right arm properly extended of course) by those who approve.

PDF is available upon request.

A cartographic reminder

Canada, Politics 3 Responses »

Jan 182025

Here is my attempt to remind our illustrious world leaders of the importance of proper cartography:

Is it really too much to hope for that they respect the esteemed profession of mapmaking?

2025

Canada, Cats, Cybernetics, Politics No Responses »

Jan 082025

We are barely a week into the new year, 2025. Yet here are some news items that would have sounded like outlandish B-movie nonsense just a few years ago.

The incoming president-elect of the United States expressed his interest in annexing Greenland, and did not rule out the use of force against a NATO ally;
The incoming president-elect of the United States expressed his interest in reoccupying the Panama Canal zone and did not rule out the use of force;
The incoming president-elect mused about turning Canada into the 51st state and did not rule out the use of “economic force” to accomplish this;
Ukraine’s offensive in Russia’s Kursk region led to a large number of casualties on the Russian side, including thousands of North Korean troops;
North Korea successfully tested a new intermediate-range missile;
An article in Foreign Affairs magazine argues that South Korea should acquire nuclear capability for deterrence;
After several similar incidents involving Russian ships in the Baltic Sea, now a Chinese vessel damaged undersea cables connecting Taiwan;
A far-right politician in EU member state Austria is set to form the next government of the country;
Alien ship set to land in New York’s Central Park turns back at the last minute – “Too dangerous, no intelligent life,” they message their home planet.

OK, I threw in the last one. But the rest? In 2025? Aren’t they just as outlandish as the bit about aliens? Aren’t we, and by that I mean the whole human race, supposed to be, you know, a tad more intelligent?

Guess not. Can’t wait for the world to be taken over by AI-assisted cats.

The economy vs. the economy

Canada, Economy, Politics No Responses »

Jan 042025

I don’t much watch news channels anymore, but earlier today, I caught a fragment of a report arguing that voters are not rejecting the left because of the economy; that the shift to the right is occurring at a time when the economy is doing fairly well, and that there was no similar shift to the right during the last major economic crisis.

A few hours later (or maybe less) on the same channel I caught a fragment of a report about CEO pay here in Canada: for the top 100 (?) companies, it is now well over 200 times the average worker’s salary. The report pointed out that barely more than a decade ago, it was “only” a little over 100 times the average worker’s salary.

So perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the economy after all?

One of the better attempts by Midjourney

I mean, maybe the economy is doing great insofar as macroeconomic indicators are concerned. But we don’t live off macroeconomic indicators. We do not pay with macroeconomic indicators for groceries at Loblaws, nor do banks accept macroeconomic indicators in lieu of a mortgage payment. And it doesn’t matter if the economy is doing great overall, if rising inequality means the middle class is left behind.

And this is how we end up in dangerous times, in ways already well understood by Aristotle some 2600 years ago. The unhappiness is palpable. This drives people to political extremism. Yet all too often, those with the power to do something about it just congratulate themselves on an economy doing great, and express incomprehension when confronted with dissatisfied voters. Must be bad messaging, they say. Perhaps foreign interference. Stupid people falling for populism.

All of the above exists of course. But the root cause, I think, is much simpler: For most voters, the economy (the economy that they experience paycheck-to-paycheck, the economy they experience at the grocery store checkout counter, at the bank when trying to get a mortgage) is not doing great. In fact, it is doing terribly. And they are getting really pissed off about it. Which of course means fertile ground for political populism.

Clouds

Canada, Local Ottawa, Personal, Weather and Climate No Responses »

Oct 062024

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.

Imagination

Canada, History, Hungary, Politics 2 Responses »

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?

Last of the Parliament Hill cats

Canada, Cats, Local Ottawa 1 Response »

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.

Orthogonal

Canada, History, Hungary, Politics 2 Responses »

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”.

Grumbling Monday

Canada, Cybernetics, Physics, Politics 2 Responses »

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.

Citizen Science in Radio Astronomy

Astronomy, Canada, Local Ottawa, Personal No Responses »

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.

A Mind Forever Voyaging

Canada, Computer Games, Local Ottawa, Politics 2 Responses »

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…

Kanadische Finanzbehörde?

Canada, Personal No Responses »

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?

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