the pod bay door

¦¦The late, great band, Big Country, released an album in 1988 that remains one of my favorites, called Peace In Our Time. The title song always struck me as a powerful, simple message – can we achieve peace before we leave this earth? This past weekend, tens of millions of people on the planet let our governments know that they subscribe to this theory. Geoff noted that sadly, the US Government doesn’t give a damn about public opinion regarding their foreign policy. If the voices of millions mean nothing, what must happen to make them heard? There was a rally in Edmonton to protest the impending war against Iraq, but I did not attend.

There are some interesting web sites supporting anti-war activism. In Alberta, there is wage-peace.org. In the US, check out United For Peace and Justice.
Read more »

I awoke at 8:00 am this morning to a phone call from my brother telling me about the shuttle. I sighed and went downstairs and watched CNN for 40 minutes, until I could take no more. Tragedies like this are wearing me out. Now I’m wondering: when the Challenger exploded, if I recall correctly, the investigation took months, and the next flight wasn’t for a couple years. This time, though, that can’t happen. Why? Because there are people working on the space station who will need to be returned to Earth sometime soon. How will we feel when that shuttle is set to land? I don’t want to know, and I hate that this has happened again.

I will defer to William Gibson’s thoughts about what happened this morning.

Naomi Klein offers a chilling view of how America is “expanding” its borders to the northern Canadian and southern Mexican lines to create what she calls Fortress Nafta. Klein: “A fortress continent is a bloc of nations that joins forces to extract favorable trade terms from other countries–while patrolling their shared external borders to keep people from those countries out.” She also describes how this is happening in Europe.

It has been snowing heavily in Edmonton since Sunday, and the temperature has dropped into the -20C range. This morning, I woke early because I had to team-teach at 9:00 am (4th year Civil Eng class), knowing the roads would be shyte and that I had to clear my driveway. While making breakfast, I cracked my head on an open cabinet door in my kitchen, and it started bleeding. When I was ready to leave, I shovelled my driveway, got in my car, backed onto the street, and got immediately stuck in more snow. I tried shovelling under my tires, etc., to no avail. Fortunately, a kind soul in a pickup truck saw this, and came by to push me out. I did make it in time for class, sore head and all.

Three weeks ago I injured a muscle near my left elbow. The pain continues, despite using a tennis elbow brace and prescription gel on the soreness. It hurt like hell to play guitar on Saturday night. I think I may return to the physiotherapist.

It’s a snowy Saturday afternoon. The roads in Edmonton are shyte. Tonight I’m performing with Amelia (fiddler) and The Celtic Fiddlers of Edmonton for Robbie Burns Night at the Edmonton Scottish Society. It’s 2:20 pm, and other than getting a haircut at 10:00 this morning, I’ve been in bed sleeping…sheesh. I think grey days can make you feel sluggish.

At the U of Alberta yesterday morning, the Board of Governors passed a series of back-breaking tuition increases on students registering for the 2003-04 school year. Who do you blame? It’s easy: our provincial government. Note that they have cut provincial funding per student in half in the past 20 years. For every dollar increase in the price of oil, our government pots $108 million dollars. For every 10¢ increase in natural gas prices, it pots $163 million. The last provincial budget assumed oil prices would benchmark at $20US/barrel, and natural gas at $3/1000 cubic feet. As of Friday, 17 January 2002, oil was at $33.91US/barrel, and natural gas at $5.54US/1000 cubic feet.

The government’s standard whine is that “there isn’t any more money”, and “we’ve got to come to grips with (fill in the blank)”. Consider that ours is far and away the richest province in Canada. Our university administration says it must work hard to convince voters of the importance of university education, but I hear and read this plea yearly, and see no efforts made, except by the students. Read how many of them feel today.
Read more »

My brother Chris sent this interesting story on the emergence of CD burning clubs. Group members chose a variety of songs, burn CDs, and send one back to every member. Downloading copyrighted material continues to be a hot topic. I agree with Dave Marsh’s comments in this article, and I’ve said this before: I’ve discovered more interesting music and been exposed to more interesting artists as a result of downloading and listening to new music from wherever. Copyright is the sacred cow in my profession. What I don’t like is the wholesale burning of an entire CD for someone else’s use, or downloading of anything for burning and resale. And so on goes the downloading wars.

It’s bloody freezing here in Edmonton today.

Am I the only person around who is not surprised of the lack of interest or outrage by Americans regarding the bankruptcy scandals involving corporate executives at Enron, Worldcom, Adelphia, etc? We’ve become numb to such events, I believe. There is so much crap happening in the world, that when we hear about senior Enron execs defrauding investors, we shrug our shoulders and check out the next news story.

David Suzuki will be on campus at the U of Alberta on Thursday, Jan 9. His talk is part of The Revolutionary Speakers Series. Last year in September, Ralph Nader spoke to a packed house about the environment, government, and citizens’ civic responsibilities to get involved. My guess is that Suzuki will be addressing the Kyoto Accord, which our provincial government has done everything it can to discredit and slam. It fascinates me one of our premier’s favorite sayings is “short term pain for long term gain”, yet when such pain might affect his oil baron buddies, it doesn’t apply. I’m looking forward to Suzuki’s lecture. I have seen him speak twice before, once in the late 60s when I skipped high school to watch him at the U of Manitoba.

School begins tomorrow, and I have lectures to deliver in various engineering design and report writing courses. January is always our heaviest month on campus.