I hate how exaggerated the news is.

I hate how every news story is exaggerated with catastrophic words. We're in a "hunger crisis", there was a "financial meltdown", swine flu is a "pandemic".

C'mon. When you use the word "catastrophe" too much, it loses it's meaning. If we keep calling every news story a "tremendous tragedy" and the "worst [blank] since [blank]" their seriousness and weightiness becomes diluted.

If every minor bad thing is a "disaster", then how do we know when there is truly a disaster?

After awhile nothing can shock me. Everything has already broken down and destroyed. Society has already collapsed. And I'm still here. Eating and wearing warm clothes and living in decent shelter.

We should stop exaggerating because when I turn on the news and hear that something is "devastated" I don't pay attention any more. I assume it's a simple exaggeration.

Should I bailout failing local tv stations?

I guess local broadcasters like CTV, Global and CBC, have been asking the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission to tax cable and satellite customers for receiving over-the-air television stations.

In other words, they're losing money because no one watches their crappy shows and they want the government to take my money and give it to them.

My thoughts are: there's a reason you're losing money. It's because there is no demand for your programming. People don't want to watch your shows. So you should fail or change. You shouldn't ask the government for a bailout.

Why? Because I don't want the government deciding what I should be watching on TV and taking my money to finance shows that no one watches.

Local is not always better. In fact, local is very often inferior. That's why we have free trade. It's why we're able to buy better quality, cheaper products elsewhere. Same goes with television and movies and radio and entertainment.

Modern Warfare vs. Twilight New Moon

Modern Warfare is a first-person shooter video game. Twilight New Moon is a fantasy-romance movie based on the novel by author Stephenie Meyer.

Both were released at the same time (mid-November). Every news story was about how Twilight New Moon was so popular and it was breaking records and was a cultural phenomenon. Every magazine cover featured Bella and Edward.

I heard a couple news stories about Modern Warfare.

Here's a comparison:

Modern Warfare 2
- first day sales $310 million
- first 5 days sales $550 million

Twilight New Moon
- first day sales $26.3 million
- first week $296 million

The lesson here is that whenever the media tells you that something is a cultural phenomenon, it's not telling you that there is something else a whole lot bigger.

In this case, it's a video game. No one wants to hear that. People who play video games are viewed as losers and geeks by the media. They're viewed as a tiny, insignificant subculture.

Who's your daddy New Moon!!!!

Our 12 week ultrasound.

On November 18, Cindy and I went for a 12 week ultrasound where they would do a bunch of preliminary tests to see if the baby has down syndrome.

First, they checked his face. The doctor said there was a "nose bone", which apparently is a good sign the baby is healthy. Apparently babies with down syndrome often don't have a nose bone.

Then he checked blood flow for a vein leading to the heart. Normal flow. Another good sign. Babies with down syndrome often have holes in their heart (as we know only too well...).

Then he checked growth. Normal size. Good.

Then he checked fluid behind the neck. Normal amount of fluid. Babies with down syndrome seem to have lots of fluid back there.

All these are good signs and we were pleased. He gave Cindy some blood tests and then a batch for some more and then, apparently, when they analyze the results they will let us know with 95% certainty whether the baby has down syndrome.

Meanwhile, it was a fun day. I could see the baby clearly. At one point it waved it's hand at me when I was talking to it. It fell asleep and wasn't moving and we were all waiting for it. The doctor came over and started jiggling the womb, trying to wake it up so he could see better.

Good times.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 2)

Hmmm looks like there are more Christmas cliche stories than I thought. Here are 5 more:

6) Christmas Retail Slump People aren't spending as much and the stores are losing money. We're in retail slump and sales are "slower than expected". Interview with sad-looking shop owner.

7) Silly Story About Santa Every year Santa does something silly. He does a dance poll strip tease or goes water skiing or steals from kids or something dumb. Picture included.

8) Dangerous Christmas Toys That Kill Children Every year China produces some awesome toys that unfortunately hurt kids. We'll hear about it. We'll hear about the recalls and the angry parents.

9) Food Bank Donations are Down No one is donating to the food banks this year! We need help from the public. Bring in your canned goods. Also: Homelessness is way up this winter. All the shelters are filled and people are forced to sleep in the cold street.

10) Dumb Toy Is Latest Craze This silly toy is the latest craze among the kids. You can buy one on ebay for a million dollars. Here's a clip of shoppers in a store fighting to buy this latest toy. Ho hum. Heard it before.

Watch for these Christmas cliche stories. (part 1)

Every Christmas season I've noticed the same stories in the media. See how many of these you come across this year.

1) The Heartless Thief Steals From Local Charity, Food Bank or Not For Profit.
This is the obligatory story of thieves stealing toys for kids or something. You hear about it every year.

2) Holiday Advice.
I'm sick of these pathetic stories. How to Survive Your Work Party. How to Keep off the Weight This Christmas. How to blah blah blah. They're all the same re-cycled, filler news stories from years past.

3) Latest Website for Tracking Santa
Guess what? There's a website that tracks Santa and you can watch his progress!! Give me a break. There are a ton of these websites and they're all hokey and fake. Every year I hear about a new way to track Santa.

4) Outrageous Story about Banning the Word "Christmas".
Every year we have the story raging about how you're not allowed to say Christmas anymore. Or something similar. This is so old. I was mad about this last year, the year before and the year before that. I don't want to hear about it again.

5) Lots of Snow / No Snow Expected
Because of this current El Nino-kind-of weather system, we're going to have a very very snowy Christmas. Or, in fact, we're going to have a dry, snowless Christmas.

Nothing has improved in the last 10 years.

I just read an article about the economy in the States. It's about the same as it was 10 years ago.

Over the past 10 years, not one new job has been created in the private sector (but the population has grown 8%). The stock market is at about the same level, despite the government pouring billions of your tax dollars into it.

In other words, all the work that's been done in the last 10 years hasn't made anyone more prosperous. How many weekends have you worked in the last 10 years? How much stress did you have?

How many days did you show up sick because you had to get that project done? How much sleep did you lose?

All for nothing. We're at the same level as we were a decade ago. This decade has essentially been a waste. We might as well have taken the last 10 years off.

Of course you might argue that your business made small improvements in efficiency or service. You might argue that products are a little better nowadays. But the point is, you're not any richer.

The country isn't any better off in an economic sense. This means that we've all been running on the treadmill, just to maintain.

We're covered in sweat, our hearts are pounding, our legs are sore. And we haven't gone anywhere. We're huffing and puffing just to stay in the sample place.

Maybe the tens will be a better decade.

My eyes glaze over whenever I hear "carbon neutral" or "carbon offset".

I'm skeptical.

The idea is that you pay an extra tax that is used to purchase a "carbon offset", which really isn't any particular thing. It's an idea - the idea being that your payment goes toward an undefined project, which one day could help the environment.

There are no standards in place. You are not actually reducing your "carbon footprint", literally. Big companies say things like, "We're running a carbon-neutral project" and they get to stamp lots of happy-faces all over their paperwork.

Yesterday I learned that carbon probably doesn't even heat up the planet. It's only correlated with global-warming, and correlation does not equal causation. The biggest thing that causes greenhouse effects is water vapour. Go figure. Water.

Also, the globe isn't heating up all that much.

"The only temperature data we can trust are satellite measurements, and they only go back to 1979. They show no warming in the southern hemisphere, and the warming trend in the northern hemisphere appears to have waned since 2001." link

Finally, only rich people in rich countries (like ours) can afford carbon offsets. Forcing developing countries to pay an extra tax hurts the people who live there. Think about it. When we were developing and growing, we NEVER had to pay a tax to the environment.

But we're asking China and India to do just that.

Defend yourself or not?

Lately at work I've been finding myself in an interesting situation. I'll get a comment or a hint from someone that I made an error. Nothing overt and nothing accusatory.

Just a hint - almost like a backhanded compliment. This is more like a subtle, (very subtle), accusation. Sometimes it's my boss. Sometimes it's just some random "customer".

When this happens I have a dilemma. Should I respond to defend myself? That's my first instinct. But then I think, "That just shows I'm defensive. It's not cool." Plus I could be imagining the hint. Maybe there wasn't anything accusatory at all.

I think a much better way is to simply ignore the subtle hint. You have no obligation to respond to a hint that you made a mistake. You maybe have an obligation to respond to a direct accusation - but a hint is just a hint.

Important people don't have time to respond to hints. They'd ignore them. They'd focus their energy on continuing to do the best work they possibly can. That's what I'm going to try to do.

An Epic Journey.

Lately I've been having some epic journeys - "containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation" - on the commute home after work.

I leave around 4:30pm, just as it's getting dark, and I arrive at home at what feels like midnight. Everything is dark. It's been pouring rain so I've been staring out of a water-streaked windshield, for hours, lines of red brake lights stretching off into the infinite distance.

I'm drained. Sometimes my leg hurts from pressing the gas and break over and over. My eyes are sore. I ache. I step in the house and am faced with an exhausting task of making dinner, cleaning, putting Jake to bed, cleaning some more.

On Fridays I need alcohol to wind down from a week of this.

Well the latest news is that my company is moving to Maple Ridge! A mere 15 minutes from my house, a few minutes from Jake's daycare! This is insanely good news, if it happens. (The problem is things change so much you never know if it will really happen until you're moving your furniture into the new office.)

I estimate it will save Jake almost 2 hours in daycare. That's a huge difference. It will save me a ton of driving and just in time for the messy winter season. (We're set to move in early December.)

This is a huge stroke of luck as Maple Ridge generally does not have any office jobs or businesses. I should know - I spent a year looking for a job in MR to no avail. Hard to believe out of all the places in the Lower mainland, the place where I work is moving 15 minutes from my house.

I'm flabbergasted. I only have a month left of epic journeys.

They changed the smell of our bathroom at work.

This morning I walked into our bathroom at work and it smells different. Sweeter. More vanillaey and bleachy.

It was jarring. I've been here for 7 months and my nose had quickly adjusted to the smell of the bathroom. I didn't notice it anymore. When I walked into the bathroom, if I noticed a smell at all, it was the foul smell of defecation.

Today it's all changed. The new smell is not unpleasant, just overpowering. I find myself wanting to breathe through my mouth - which isn't so good. If I breathe through my mouth it means the air won't filter through my nose hairs. I'll be breathing in raw shit particles.

I'm sure in a few weeks, my nose will perfectly adjust to this new bathroom smell. By then we're moving to a new location and THAT bathroom will have a smell.

By the way, when you move offices, here are the questions people often forget to ask:

- What is the bathroom like? Roomy? Clean? Smelly?
- Is there a place to go for a walk? Can you walk around the block or is it industrial wasteland?
- Can you walk to a decent/cheap place to buy lunch and/or coffee?
- Is there an adequate lunch room with a microwave, fridge, running water and coffee machine?
- Are there other people who work near you? Are they attractive? Are they your age, or are they really old?
- Is it too cold or too warm? Does the heat work? Is the air condition too powerful?

5 Random Things I Hate (part 3)

Five more:

1) I hate when you're cooking bacon and the pieces are getting smaller and smaller because all the grease is running off. By the time they're done - the bacon strips are tiny, shriveled little things the size of your small toe. I hate that. You eat the two-bite pieces of pig fat and you're still starving! The bacon misled you!

2) I hate when people scribble their signature and make it unreadable. Why?? I need to know who you are. Why make your signature illegible? Are you in that much of a rush that you can't take a few extra seconds to neatly write your name? I hate you and your penmanship.

3) I hate it when you have grease stains on your pants (because you have a young child who causes all sorts of stains on your clothes), right near your groin, and it never dries because it's a grease stain, and so it looks like a wet spot - specifically like you wet your pants - and you're walking around all day with these wet pants and you're trying to block the view of the wet pants by hanging your arms down and sheltering your groin with your hands. I hate that.

4) I hate people who brush or floss their teeth in a public bathroom. It grosses me out. Various molecules of feces and urine are floating in the air, and these people are rubbing these molecules into their mouths with a toothbrush. Meanwhile, there are sounds of people farting and urine splattering against porcelain and people grunting while they move their bowels. How can you possible brush your teeth in this malodorous atmosphere? I hate you.

5) I hate that all movies cost the same. Shouldn't good movies cost more than crappy ones? Shouldn't new releases cost more than movies that are weeks/months old? It's called supply and demand people! If you want to get rid of the crowds and lineups at your theatre when the latest blockbuster opens, just raise the price. The theatres will be just as profitable (if not more) and won't have as many overhead costs (hiring extra staff etc.). Of course, concession sales might drop... I hate that this idea probably won't work!

Christmas lights are up.

On November 13 I first noticed Christmas lights in our neighbourhood. November 13! It's getting later and later every year. Usually the lights go up early November. The day after Halloween.

What's going on? Why are people becoming more humbug? Why don't people want to decorate?

I think it comes down to 2 reasons. 1) Laziness. People no longer want to put an effort into celebrating the holiday season. This is a shame. 2) Less holiday spirit. In the old days, people lit their houses up after Thanksgiving. And the lights were huge, extravagant, unbelievable.

Christmas is just not the big deal it used to be. The last few years, holiday shopping spending has been flat. I haven't even heard any Christmas carols on the radio. Usually this time of year one of the stations goes 24/7 Christmas. Nothing yet.

People it's mid November. Christmas will be here in the blink of an eye! We need to start celebrating and partying and buying gifts. We need to start standing in line and getting alcohol and calling restaurants to book our holiday party.

Things are changing. Christmas is fading away, and I don't like it one bit.

Jake took 8 steps.

Last Sunday Jake took at least 8 steps on his own. We were in the kitchen and he was playing with his music ball. I called him over and he just stood up and started walking.

This was the farthest he's gone. He's been able to do 2 or 3, no problem. He's reached 4 and 6 steps. But 8 is quite far.

His walking is a sort of back and forth gait. His legs don't move forward that much. They do a bit, but most of the motion is side to side. I've seen other little kids when they first learn to walk and he has that sort of gait.

If we're sitting, calling him over, he tends to walk carefully the first few steps then lose control and collapse into our arms for his reward hug.

If we get too excited, he gets too excited and seems to lose his focus on walking. It's best if he just sort of decides on his own and starts walking across the floor.

He keeps his arms outstretched while he walk, so that he can hold things or run his hand along the wall for balance.

We have to take his socks off or he'll slip on the floor. He walks in his bare feet. Sometimes his pants fall down and he slips on his pant legs.

When you write a blog you become self-obsessed.

One of the problems of writing a daily blog is that you have to think a lot about yourself. That sucks. We shouldn't think too much about ourselves. It can lead to depression.

I have a theory that the most depressed people you meet are the people who spend all day thinking about their problems. Or they spend hours analyzing themselves, evaluating their successes, comparing themselves to others.

Naval-gazing is a sure way to get sad. A little introspection isn't a bad thing. It's good to be somewhat self-aware, just don't overdo it.

That's a great thing about having an absorbing hobby, working hard in a career or having a child to take care of. You don't have a lot of time to self-obsess. You're too busy. You're in the "flow" of every day life and depression is distant and fuzzy.

When you have a blog, you have to think of things to write. You have to categorize and detail your opinions. You have to use examples from your life. All this requires thinking about oneself.

Have you ever tried this social experiment?

One day you realize that you're the only one who calls, invites, writes or initiates contact with someone. You've been a friends for years - but you've done all the work. All the organizing and inviting and planning.

You've just realized, "Hey that person never calls me."

You want to try an experiment. You want to see how long it will be before they contact you. So you stop all inviting, emailing, talking and communicating.

A couple days pass. You haven't' heard anything. No big deal. Only a couple days.

A couple weeks pass. Hey what's up??! What's wrong? Maybe you should contact them after all - something could have happened. Maybe they're very sick, dying, in the hospital. No, stay strong.

A couple months pass. You're angry now. Does your companionship mean nothing? NO WAY are you going to contact them again.

More time passes. You never hear from or see the person again.

"I don't want to get your hopes up..."

We recently had a community speech therapist come over to work with Jake. There had been a year waiting list.

She came over for an hour one day, then an hour the next day, doing an "evaluation" of his "communication".

When she was finished and we asked her how he was doing and when he might talk. She said, "I don't want to get your hopes up but someday he might make word approximations."

Trust me, you didn't get our hopes up.

Then she said she wanted us to enroll him in a program that would build a facilitated communication device - something with pictures he could show us that would tell us what he wanted.

We said, "We want him to talk." We declined her advice.

This is the song I want to write.

I want to write an awesome, epic song at least 6 minutes long. It's got to have a whole bunch of different parts - some slow, some fast, and the tempo has to change at least once.

It needs to have a great guitar riff - preferable acoustic, mixed with electric. The acoustic needs to be throughout the song as a driving rhythm, and the strings need to be slapped at every other beat like a snare drum.

The electric has to blend with the acoustic, at a higher octave so that it's sort of screamy. The riff will have a couple variations - a long variation and a short variation. The short one is a choppier, truncated version of the long one. It starts a certain way, moves in another direction, then ends in the same way it started.

Similarly, the song will be like this as well - a palindrome of itself.

The main melody will be different from the riff, yet they'll complement each other. Likewise, there will be a few different melodies but they will all sound similar. One melody will pop up expectantly, then give way to a different melody in a unpredictable pattern.

The chord progression will be a little strange - perhaps even a bit atonal at first. It will create a whole bunch of unresolved tension.

I'd like the song to be minimalist in terms of instrumentation. Only 3 instruments or fewer at a time, along with the vocals. The song needs to be dreamy like a lullaby, then swingy and jazzy and dancey, with elements of boogie blues within the riff.

The lyrics need to be nonsensical yet beautiful. Beautiful nonsense. I'd also like the song to have a couple false endings.

Things I was/should be afriad of.

I wrote in an earlier blog post that we all secretly want to be afraid and the media/government obliges us.

Today I got my swine flu shot (didn't hurt at all, but later felt like someone punched my shoulder). It's still all over the news - how the swine flu is going to kill us all because there are vaccine shortages.

I thought, "What diseases/sicknesses did the media try to make us afraid of in the 80s and 90s?"

Well, I'd say it was AIDS in the 1980s. When I was in elementary school everyone was going to die of AIDS. Guaranteed. Then AIDS faded away to "HIV", which became controllable by a cocktail of drugs.

Then in the 90s I had trouble remembering what I was afraid of. Of course I was in university, largely oblivious to world events. Too young to be worried about anything in particular.

Someone said it was Mad Cow disease. Or Ebola virus. Or the autism explosion. My co-worker said there were a whole bunch of food poisoning concerns in the 1990s. E-coli, etc.

Then in the 2000s it became a series of exotic flu diseases SARS, bird flu, swine flu.

What sickness is next? I want to know what I should fear.

Today is Remembrance Day

This is definitely the most solemn holiday. You're not really supposed to be happy on this day - which is tough because it's a free day off work. (It's a holiday in some parts of Canada, not in others.) How can you not be happy?

Actually Good Friday is also supposed to be a bummer. Jesus died. How can you be happy about that? The thing is a lot of people aren't religious so they're not too bummed out about Good Friday.

Remembrance Day on the other hand is just sad. All those people who died in wars. Suffered for us and our freedom. Sacrificed their lives.

It's always cold on Remembrance Day and raining or snowing. There's supposed to be a minute silence at 11am, but no one ever goes the full minute. It's more like a 30 second silence, and even then it's punctuated by that sad trumpet.

In school Remembrance Day was the day when you had an assembly and someone read Flanders Fields and an old war vet came and spoke about the war. I remember being proud of wearing my poppy, and often pricking my fingers on its pin.

One Remembrance Day I was in a really solemn mood. I decided I would write a poem about the sacrifice veterans made for us. A poem that would rival Flanders Fields. About 5 minutes in I realized my poem was horrible and I quickly aborted the idea. That was the day that I basically learned I'd never be a poet.

4 Jake stories.

1) Jake can stand on his tippy toes and can reach tables and counters now. This means if he sees a toy on a table or counter he will stand up and try to reach it. The problem is he can lose grip as he reaches and the toy can fall on his head. So we have to be careful. He also likes to close doors and drawers, but hasn't figured out that he can get his fingers caught.

2) Jake knows what a zipper is. He will touch his jacket zipper, but can't really pull it down or up. The jacket is too slack. He also understands when we ask him to take off his bib. He'll grab it from around his neck and try to pull it off. He doesn't realize you need to undo the velcro around the neck first. Finally, he tends to place his shoes and socks on top of his feet when you ask him to put them on. And he places the shoe and sock on top of the foot that's already in the shoe and sock. I say, "No Jake, you put it on the other foot."

3) Jake will now walk to where you ask him to go - if you're holding his hand (and apply gentle guiding when he gets distracted). For example, I can now say, "Jake let's go have dinner. Let's walk to your chair." I'll hold his hand and he'll stand up and walk over to his chair. Or I'll say, "Let's go see Mommy on the bed." Then I'll hold his hand as he walks down the hall to our bedroom. We have to keep the other doors closed, however, or he cold forget where he's going, get distracted and veer inside another room.

4) If you lie down on the floor on your back. Jake will crawl over, position himself behind your head, and then try to pull you up to a sitting position by your hair. He says "Up up up up!" over and over again as he does that, yanking on your hair. Apparently he doesn't like it when you lie down.

Talking on a cell phone while driving will soon be illegal.

The provincial government recently announced that talking on the cell phone or texting while driving will soon be illegal.

They announced it to great fanfare. People were happy. A few representatives from various community groups were standing beside the minister at the press conference, smiling and nodding their heads.

People phoned into the radio station and said it was a great idea because they've had lots of "close calls" or "near misses" with distracted drivers.

My first instinct as well is to support the move. No one likes people yapping on their cell phones while they drive.

But we also need to think about the role of government. Should the government be responsible for legislating good behaviour? Can you legislate good behaviour? Do laws make people moral? Is the government's role to take care of us? Do I want a portion of my taxes supporting these kinds of initiatives?

Where do we draw the line? If talking on a cell phone distracts drivers, then shouldn't it be illegal to talk to a passenger? Or fiddle with the radio?

We need to remember every law that is passed, no matter how benign, gives the government just a little more power over our lives. And, in this case, the government restricts our freedom just a little more as well.

PS: Isn't the expression "near miss" silly? Wouldn't it just be a "miss"? I would think a near miss would actually be a hit.

The void.

When life gets tough you can always say:

"Oh sweet void. Absorb me into your nothingness!"

It will happen one day. You'll die and all there will be is void. Forever. An infinite, blank, blackness stretching to infinity.

You will be wiped out. Your thoughts, memories, aches and pains, all obliterated into a vast emptiness.

I'm told the void is kind of like the way things were before you were born. What was it like for you thousands of years ago? It wasn't like anything.

Likewise, thousands, millions, billions of years from now it won't be like anything.

I'm told you shouldn't fear the void because fearing it would be like fearing the darkness between eye blinks. When the void happens, it's simultaneously instantaneous and infinite. The void immediately stretches an instant of blackness into infinity.

I'm told the void is like going to bed late at night when you're really tired. That moment just as you drift off to sleep. Only you never wake up.

In the car on the way home.

Yesterday afternoon, while driving home, I started thinking about driving. The light had begun to darken and rain started to splatter the windshield. There I was, travelling 100 kilometers an hour - a speed unheard and incomprehensible the vast majority of humans who have ever lived.

Sensors inside the car sensed it was dark and provided me with blueish light so I could lightly see the interior controls. The headlights had switched themselves on, creating a pool of bright yellow light making everything bright and clear. Mechanical wipers swished water out of my way, allowing me to see unobstructed.

The car blew warm, de-humidified air into the cabin, making me feel comfortable, despite the unfriendly elements of wind, rain and cold outside the car. I adjusted the fan so that it blew warm air onto my feet, which were a little cold.

I listened to a audiobook read by a professional narrator, created in a studio thousands of miles away. When I tired of this, I tuned the sound system to music - a reggae-type music from a CD I had borrowed from a massive catalogue of CDs held in our library.

My left show was off, and I rubbed my foot, massageingly, at red lights. I thought, "I'm in a bubble of comfort, surrounded by tons of steel and metal, hurtling me efficiently toward a destination."

Imagine what historical humans would have thought

I'm not rich. Not noble or Kingly or important in any major sense. I'm just a regular human. Look at this luxury I have. I was inside a tiny and comfortably enclosed, speeding home.

I can see how road rage happens. Someone crashes into you, hurts you, disturbs your peace. Hell yeah, you could easily become aggressive or offended. The car wraps around you and shields you from personal contact. Other vehicles are similar machines, driven by nameless, faceless people.

A computer can predict what I do.

This is perhaps the most frustrating game ever. It's called MindReader and the goal is to fool the computer by randomly pressing a 1 or 0. Meanwhile, the computer is trying to "read your mind" and predict whether you're going to press 0 or 1.

The first one to 100 wins. I've played 5 times and I haven't even been close to winning. In other words, the computer has successfully out-predicted me 5 times in a row - and by huge margins.

The computer uses math; specifically a "Context-Tree Weighting Method", which the programmers call "adequate". The computer uses math to read my mind and predict what I'm going to do next. Even when I try to be unpredictable, the computer still wins.

This scares and amazes me. It scares me because it shows that I'm not so unique after all. I can be predicted. It amazes me because this knowledge can be used to predict how people will react in certain situations. It takes the uncertainty out of behaviour.

The most interesting thing is that the computer predicts my next move even before I've consciously made it. The 2 or 3 seconds of my brain's reasoning is totally useless. I should just have a computer make all my decisions for me.

In the end, it will have chosen what I would have chosen most of the time anyway.

The best thing a father can do for his children...

The best thing a father can do for his children is love their mother. This is all you need to make your children happy.

If you can do this simple thing, than you will be a succesful father. If your children can see this, they will learn how to love in their own lives.

Their father's love for their mother is the measure of all future relationships. Their father's love for their mother is the strongest, purest, most important emotion they will learn from, and perhaps some day emulate.

Toys, movies, televsion, books - a child will gladly give these objects up to ensure growth in a loving family home.

If sports were played backwards...

The season would start with randomly placed standings and the teams would play the schedule, evening out all the wins and losses until the final game of the season, which would end in a 0-0 tie, with the team having a record of 0 wins, 0 losses and 0 ties.

The season would start with one team jumping around and cheering, then calming down and returning the championship trophy.

Players would go to the penalty box and after a few minutes the referee would blow the whistle and tell the players to leave the box. The best players would spend the whole game trying to take back their points, and the opposing team would spend the whole game trying to stop them.

Fans would come to the game excited and cheering, then as the game started, they'd calm down and relax until the game ended, when they'd stand up head to the concourse, buy a program, return their tickets to the box office and head back to the parking lot.

Coaches would start the game by shaking hands, then yell at their players, then calm down as the score decreased to 0 and then leave the playing field, ignoring everything except the game's strategies, which they think about in detail.

They'd think about the game for the next few days until the beginning of the next game.

The players would show up to practice, exhausted. Then, as they practiced, would gain more and more energy until practice ended, at which point they wouldn't feel tired at all.

The coaches would explain a complicated instruction and the team would practice the instruction well, but get worse and worse at it, the more they practiced; until eventually they couldn't perform it anymore.

Legendary athletes would return all their awards, come out of retirement, do amazingly well, then get worse and worse as they grew younger and younger. Slowly everyone would forget about them.

I think it would be cool to have an enemy.

I've always wanted an enemy. Someone dedicating his or her life to my demise. That would be so cool. To think, my life concerns someone so much that they're willing to put untold amount of time and effort into destroying me!

To have an enemy I would think you'd have to be an important, powerful person. I'm just not that important nor am I particularly powerful. Even if some other unimportant, un-powerful person decided to make me his or her enemy, I doubt it would last long.

There simply would not be enough emotion or motivation for us to be enemies.

Powerful people have enemies. Powerful organizations have enemies. And powerful concepts have opposites (enemies). I'm thinking good vs. evil or democracy vs. communism; or Bin Laden vs. the President; God vs. Satan.

By the way, you have to give Satan some credit for openly saying that God is his enemy! You can't have a more powerful enemy than God! And why would God tolerate Satan as an enemy? Shouldn't he just smite them with the snap of a finger?

God must want Satan as an enemy - similar to how I kind of want an enemy. It's an ego boost, I guess.

A good scam for getting spare change.

Today I came across a great scam for getting spare change from someone. There are quite a few scam artists in Vancouver who have evolved techniques to get money from people.

One guy goes around asking form a few dollars because he ran out of gas. Another woman pretends she's blind and asks for help at a crosswalk. Then she asks for money.

Today I was walking to my car in a paid parking lot. A guy passed me near the parking machine, cursing out loud. "Oh man I don't have enough!" he said loudly so I could hear.

Then he asked me, "Do you have a quarter?" He motioned toward the

Now normally I'd pony up. But for some reason I was suspicious of this guy. I said, "No" and kept walking. When I got in my car I watched him through the windshield.

He walked around the lot for awhile and then left. He didn't go back to his car, which makes me think that I was right. He doesn't have a car. He pretended to be short for parking. A great scam. It seemed so natural and a part of me wanted to help.

Oh well, I'm sure he'll find someone else to give him a quarter for his parking pass.

A can of soda costs $2.99.

How did we ever get to the point where a can of soda pop costs $2.99? I'm talking about those "energy drinks" - Rockstar, Redbull and the like.

Whoever came up with that marketing idea was brilliant.

"Hey, we're not making enough money selling carbonated water and sugar, so let's throw some caffeine and ginseng in there, and quadruple the price."

Brilliant! And even more so because young people buy energy drinks. They're cool. And marketers' prime demographic are males 18 to 35.

I've only drank one of those energy drinks in my life. Don't get me wrong, it tasted good. Great, even. Better than Coke or Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.

But excessive caffeine isn't good for your body. And excessive cost isn't good for your wallet. So I doubt I will drink them again. I'm just too old.

If I want an energy kick I'll spend $2.99 on a Starbucks coffee.