Time stands still... for a second or two.

Time rarely gets a second chance.  The clock ticks forward, and it does so at a pretty consistent speed.  Though we use our own version of time largely dependent on where we live... CST, PST, MT, GMT, there is only one true time.  The Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is actually a time scale based on the mean solar time and earths real time spin.  In 1999, for some unknown reason, the earth's spin actually increased.  I blame Prince.  If only he hadn't declared the year a party, we might not have been living life in the fast lane.

UTC is counted by using the atomic clock, but is kept in sinc with the actual mean solar time by adjusting the time on the atomic clock twice a year if needed.  This day is on June 30th.  This Leap Second Time Adjustment Day however, there is no adjustment needed.  It seems we do not need to either slow down the atomic clock...  repeat a second, or speed it up and skip a second in time.  So it's not much of a leap at all this year.  Maybe in we'll need to on Leap Second Time Adjustment Day 2.0 (December 31). There is a movement afoot in the scientific community to abolish the Leap Second. Sure.. it might not seem like that big a deal now... but in a million years or so... we could have lost 1 week 4 days 13 hours 46 minutes and 40 seconds. 

The atomic clock, and the fact that I'm staying with my watch addicted mate this week, has me wondering how accurate a timepiece can be if not adjusted likewise as is the UTC. Is a Rolex more likely to keep accurate time and slow down for just a second every now and again, and only if announced that an adjustment is needed?  Can a Patek Phillipe? I don't know if my Android can or that my solar powered Citizen can do it either, and it only runs if it gets to see the light of day.  Could an atomic watch be too far away? After all, how big does an oscillating atom have to be? I'm sure in time, this is time piece we will all be wearing. 

At 0 hours 13 minutes 35 seconds GMT on this date in 1908 a Meteor struck Russia, causing an explosion above the earth.  Although the meteor is thought to have burst above ground, it is still considered an impact, and in written history, still the largest of it's kind.  There are estimates that the blast was the equivalent of anywhere from 5-30 megatons of TNT.  The 'event' is called the Tunguska Explosion, and thus today is Meteor Day.  I'm not sure if this a day we should celebrate.  Scientific estimations at what the impact of a meteor hitting earth today show mass destruction not unlike the movies.  A large meteor could be an extinction causing event.  Our planet would be left to the cockroaches and Twinkies, bringing on a whole new time... Blattapastryzoic period.  Now there is a time we could leap over.

Need a hug? Phone a friend.

Tuesday, 29 June 2010 - Telephones have changed the world.  Cellular telephones... the mobile, the cell... have changed my world.  Once we were happy enough with a great big long cord on the wall mounted phone in the kitchen that you could drag around from room to room while painting your toe nails and getting the latest gossip about Susan's friend Linda's best friend's sister's boyfriends buddy Paul.  Then I remember getting a second phone and another phone jack.  Then I got a phone in my room.  Then I got my own phone number.  Would it ever get any better than that? It was hard to imagine anyone having it better.  I had my own phone, in my own room, and now when I was talking to Susan's friend Linda's best friend's sister's boyfriends buddy Paul I could do so without any fear that there was someone on the extension.

Then along came the mobile telephone.  I of course got one. It was the size of a brick and had an antenna that would make NASA proud. Fortunately, it was at the beginning of the whole cell phone craze, and it wasn't long before Motorola came out with a flip phone.  Of course it was now the size of half a brick - unless you put on the extended life battery. Like magic, the phone would now last 12 hours, but was back to being the size of a brick. Time marched on, and the phones got progressively smaller.  Then came games, and calculators.  Ringtones... could it get any better?  Individual ringtones... very cool.  I got my first I-Paq phone and it was my palm pilot, phone, and camera all in one. I thought I'd hit the big time, but alas, there was more to come still.

On this day in 2007 Apple put the first iPhone out for sale.  There was a line around every Apple Store, AT&T re-seller for the masses to finally get their hands on the phone that was going to change things again.. It really did change the way we thought of phones, and yet another race was on. Who could pack the most uses in to a single phone? We now have instant access to phones no matter our location.

There is no longer a phone in my house.  No phone jacks, no extensions, no phone bills.  I have my iPhone, as any self respecting geek should. I now have with me at any time of day or night a map of the world, an ongoing game of Scrabble with Hiro, Wikipedia, weather updates, all my contacts, my pictures and my calendar. I have become so attached to my phone that should I leave the house without it, I feel naked.  It's worse than that public speaking nightmare.  What if I need to look something up?  What if someone is texting me? What if I'm supposed to be somewhere and I don't know where? 

I am attached to my phone, that I had to seperate work from play. Just incase I don't have enough ways to stay in touch, I also carry around a Blackberry... but that one is only for work.  I have become so very attached to my phones, that I keep them very close.  They are in my breast pockets, a.k.a. my bra. In fact, I keep my iPhone in the left side, and the BlackBerry in the right.  The former is personal, the latter is work.  It's easy to keep track.  The personal phone is full of people I adore, and so it lives close to my heart.  It's like a digital hug. The work phone... well it's in the other "breast pocket".  Speaking of digital hugs... today is Hug Day.  Go ahead and hug your mates, hug your friends, and hug your kids. Me... I'll make a few phone calls from whereever I happen to be.

OOH.... never mind, I'm getting a hug myself.  My left breast is ringing.  Did I mention I keep it on vibrate?  Hugs.

Paul, Babe, Rex and Tyson

Monday, 28 June 2010 - The 49th parallel is really the ultimate line in the sand. If you are above it... Canadian. If you are below it... American. Yet centuries ago that line really didn't have secured border crossings.  It is why so many things that are Canadian are touted or revered as American. Let's be honest, the marketing machine has always been larger on the south side of the line. Of course there is basketball, which was really a Canadian PE teacher's way of getting some tallish boys to get a bit of exercise. But it became an American classic.  Indeed we have only one NBA team in Canada (well, two once... but let's not draw too much attention to the Grizzlies).

Let's talk folklore. Paul Bunyan... now there was a tall boy. Like all good folklore, it is passed from generation to generation over camp fires, sleepovers, and boyscout camp. The tales of Paul Bunyan originated in Quebec during the Papineau Rebellion. In the original lore, Paul Bonjean (sounds "Bonyenne") was a great, bearded lumberjack that helped the lumberjacks of the Two Mountains area of Quebec fight against the British. He was hailed as the great defender of the people. The stories got told over and over and with each telling of the tale, a little embellished. I suspect that after a couple of cross-border camping trips, the tales just fell under the spell of that same US marketing machine... and so grew Paul Bunyan's stature as American folklore.  Tales of Paul Bunyan make it into the written literature in 1910, by an American journalist named James MacGillvary.  In time, Mr. Bunyan has become responsible for scooping out the Great Lakes in order to give his ginormous ox a beverage.  His footprints are responsible for the 10,000 lakes in Minnesota.  He dug out the Grand Canyon by dragging his big ass axe behind him, and built Mount Hood by piling rocks on to a campfire to put it out. I'm sure his trusty blue ox - the larger than normal "Babe" was a sidekick, and companion in all his adventures and hard work.

With the wonders of all Mr. Bunyan's work, and his sheer size, I'm surprised that there is only one day to celebrate the man.  Given to day is Paul Bunyan Day, you might want to celebrate with a Keg Size. Infact, everything you do today, you should go large. Maybe that is why when Tyson and Hollyfield took to the ring on this day in 1997, Mikey bit off a chunk of Evander's ear. If you are going to have a meal, a heavyweight champion is as good as super sizing the fries.

PS... Happy Birthday Rex.  You might not be blue, and you probably couldn't dig out a channel of earth the size of the grand canyon, but you carried home the croissants this morning and that makes you my trusty side kick.

If you've a date in Dubrovnik.... She'll be wearing Oakley shades

Sunday, 27 June 2010 -  The globe is an ever changing, living breathing thing.  We can call it Mother Nature, call it the power of the tides, you can blame it on the moon, hell, you can even call it god... but whatever you call it there is no denying the unmeasurable power of the planet. Over the centuries and thousands and thousands of years, geologists, biologists, paleontologists, physicists and backyard astronomers have shown the amazing changes our planet has undergone.  From the Ice Age to the Pleistocene, from Lucy to Uncle Bob... change is the only thing we can without a doubt say is constant.  Think string theory and you would think that those changes and random collisions are actually predictable. Maybe.

I watched a documentary tonight detailing our reliance on the one celestial orb in to which we have managed to hammer in a flag.  The moon, though slowly moving away from us at a rate of about 2.5 inches a year, is largely responsible for keeping the earth spinning on the right axis.  Should our moon decide to bugger off (and really, with the way we treat our planet who could blame it if it did), the earth would continue to roam around the oft worshiped ball of flames. However, it would no longer do so on an axis that allows for semi-predictable weather patterns.  Instead, the earth would waggle and wiggle.  The poles would be in direct sun for days, maybe months.  Imagine penguins in sunglasses?  I can't see it.  Foster Grant would have to start with a whole new pattern.  After all, penguins have no ears to sit sunglasses upon. I can actually picture the Emperor penguins wearing Maui Jim's. Go figure, today is Sunglasses Day.  I hope that Foster Grant and Ray Ban are out celebrating.  Maybe you can find Foster in a pub, Ray out riding his bike and Jim hanging on the beaches of the South Pole.

The continents have shifted, moved, grown and contracted over the last several million years.  What was likely once a large singular land mass became a bunch of continents that required airlines to overcome. It is fairly difficult to catch a train from Mozambique to Honolulu.  Even in our recorded history, the continents have changed.  Borders are redefined regularly.  Countries come in to being, and countries cease to exist.  Towns get absorbed by larger urban centres, and farms become condo developments.  There was once a place called Constantinople, which was once Byzantium.  Now it's Istanbul.  I hate to channel a song, but

Even old New York, was once New Amsterdam.
Why'd they change it... I can't say.
People just liked it better that way........ 1.

On today's date in 1358, the Republic of Dubrovnik was founded. Historians suggest that Dubrovnik, once Ragusa, was originally founded by the Greeks, but later came under Byzantine protection.  After the crusades, it came under the control of Venice.  The Rupublic of Dubrovnik stood until the late 1660's, when a decline in shipping and an earthquake nearly wiped it out (over 5000 people died and the buildings were essentially leveled), the republic sold off two areas to the Ottomans to avoid the advances of the Venetians (conflict, not a first date gone horribly wrong).   There is hundreds of years of history after that, but lets skip to present day. Today, Dubrovnik is a city in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea.  So if you've a date in the Republic of Dubrovnik... she'll be waiting in Croatia.


1.  "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" by They Might be Giants.... I thank you for this.  The once song that has been stuck in my head since college and alas...  there it remains.

Forgive, get high, and forget.

Saturday, 26 June 2010 - So it's Saturday night, and you are out with a few mates.  You start at a pub, have a few, work your way to the local rib joint, inhale half a pig slow roasted and coated in bbq sauce, and then hit the local watering hole for a few more. Sounds like a pretty decent Saturday night really.  What if during that night you get in to a battle over, oh I don't know, the next round of football matches.  You pit country against country, and your battle gets deep.  Perhaps it isn't even about football, but world security and the role sport plays in developing a world wide peace.  I have to wonder how many politico's it took in that local watering hole on this day in 1945 to sign the first ever United Nations Charter.  Do you think they knew that really, all you need is football and ribs? Every good argument with mates over a pint or two usually ends with a few slaps on the back, a story to tell next time about that time when one buddy tried to kick another buddy but fell and broke his arm up high... broke the humerous and it wasn't really that funny, but you tell it over and over again anyway.

The United Nations may have missed it's mark.  The charter was simple enough:

To maintain international peace and security, to take collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights, achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.^1.

What could be more difficult than that right?  Seems "simples" enough. Just bring together a few political animals, cage them up in a room, and let them talk about how they are going to solve the world's largest issues just be getting together. I would like to suggest that FIFA is probably doing a better job.

I suspect that there is probably a greater global impact on peace and security if we could put an end to the drug trafficking trade.  Take a look at the wars and battles that have been going on in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Afghanistan, China, Malaysia, Russia, and so much more.  The drug trafficking industry leads to civil wars, gorilla wars, death, decay, child abuse, and mafia bosses with a penchant for cannoli.  The drug trade also leads to smaller threats to peace on a personal level.  Drug use and abuse can lead to petty crime, broken car windows, street walkers, broken families, violence, death, overdoses and more. The results of the drug wars world wide have a staggering effect on those living right in our own backyards. 

Today is International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking.  I somehow doubt one day against such a global black spot will be nearly enough. Any illicit trafficking of drugs on home soil likely started with the farming of poppies in Afghanistan, the harvesting of Cocoa leaves in Colombia, the wars on the streets in Mexico and the politics and death that thrive on the same. There are governments who benefit from the trade, and maffia and cartels that depend on trafficking to hold strong. Drug abuse is rampant world wide, not just at home, on the east side or in the projects.  I suspect that there is alot more to this industry than the junkies on the receiving end.  There is too much to gain for countries who have little, and too much invested to give up without a war.  The UN wants peace. However, this is a pretty enormous challenge. They might have to pull out the peace pipe because putting a few old stogies in a room a few times a year to discuss the need for world peace sounds to me like they've all smoked a little weed. The intentions are good, and for that reason, I can forgive them for it as today is also Forgiveness Day. 

1. The 'Readers Digest' version of the UN Charter found on the UN website http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml

Somewhere over the rainbow... MJ dyes

Friday, 25 June 2010 - Do you ever wonder what really drives a person to do the things they do largely because they are things you just couldn't see yourself doing? Can you not picture yourself doing them from a lack of bravery, common sense, or the reality checks that keep your behaviors in check? There are great men, odd men, and men of conviction that give us a rich and colourful history because they maybe just did the things they thought made sense to them and no one else.

George Armstrong Custer was an interesting man, who is probably remembered most for his utterly disastrous battle in the black hills of Montana.  The Battle at Little Big Horn was likely not his best move, but certainly his most memorable.  During and leading up to this battle, the Colonel refused help, left behind the guns that may have come in handy, and divided up his troops - all 600 of them - even though he had advanced information on the sheer number of Sioux that would be faced.  But...this Colonel - even dead, had the benefit of great press. A truly skillful media man, from the great beyond, somehow managed to find himself an esteemed place in US history.  He worked the press before the battle, and his wife worked the press after.  Proving again that behind every great man is a great woman (thank you Annie Lenox).

Good Ol' George died on this day in 1876 on that battlefield.  Not but moments after praising his troops and asking them to finish up so they could hit the saloon and pillage a few buxom Sioux women and a few hottie Cheyennes no doubt.  Custer did not make it to the bar that night.  I have a few other suspicions about that night.  I say he did make it to the bar, made a few indecent proposals, and had the bejesus knocked out of him by a woman. Indeed at a public meeting of the Northern Cheyenne in June of 2005 at a public meeting, a 100 year silence was broken and the traditional storytellers told another version of the days events on June 25, 1876.  They tell a story that has been passed down according to their oral tradition that "Buffalo Calf Road Woman, a Northern Cheyenne heroine of the Battle of the Rosebud, struck the final blow against Custer, which knocked him off his horse before he died."¹Chalk another one up to a scorned woman.

Give the Colonel cudos though, he did stick to his guns and he lead his troops into something.  I don't know if I could do the same.  But, people have great strength when it comes to standing up for what they believe.  On June 25th in 1978, Gilbert Baker and his boyfriend Jomar Teng tye-dyed a flag and flew it with pride at the first ever Gay Pride Parade in San Fransisco.  Not only did it take great skill and probably a shit load of pot to make a flag out of tye-dye...  but they had to dress up in there Sunday best spats and thongs and fly the flag in a time when we couldn't really joke about the spats without implying a negative.  Honestly, in today's world, the Pride Parades have the Macy's Day Parades beat hands (and tops) down for entertainment, music, dancing, and body paint.  Gilbert really did need to go out on a limp.  But in honour of Gilbert, and Jomar, and all the other friends they made that day, today is GLBT Flag Day.  Yes... I said Flag, but that reminds me of a side story.

Once while working for the City, I and my conservative bordering on uptight boss, were looking online for the flags of the world for our multilingual website.  While typing in www.flags.com I missed the "L".  Not sure which was more entertaining... the website, or my blushing boss.

Ok, back to Flag Day.  This is the start of Pride Week in cities around the world.  No matter what your lifestyle, the colour, sex, gender, or preferences of your partners or yourself, be proud.  Be proud to live in a time when acceptance and possibility is possible.  We may not be there yet, but I think we are getting there. Its 32 years later... lets hope we've grown as a society and as human beings. Let the waxing begin.f

Oh yeah... MJ.  Well, it is also the anniversary of the death of Michael Jackson.  Speaking of doing things you sometimes don't understand...  MJ was born black.  He was born in a time when great strides were being made for the Black rights movements. He had an opportunity to change the way the world saw people who are black.  Instead, MJ died white.  These are certainly "colours" of some kind, but as a human being I think I am more proud of the rainbow of colours in the GLBT Flag than I am of the greyscale of MJ.  I am neither black nor GLBT, but I believe with conviction that all people, no matter your leanings, biological drive or melatonin is any different than the rest. Perhaps if George Custer had stood up for the same then, there would have been no Little Big Horn, but rather a peaceful meeting over a pipe, and the breaking of bannock.

1.  Wikipedia   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Armstrong_Custer