Category: Daily updates

Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph

A matter of discipline

Here is a quick poll for readers who have chosen to specialize themselves in one or another area of professional practice or study. Firstly, what is the area you have chosen? What made it appealing? Has it worked out the way you expected? Secondly, what different area seems most appealing to you now (whether or not it is actually different from the one you do).

Personally, the non-policy-analysis area that appeals to me most is probably applied biological sciences. If I had the time, money, and inclination to do another university degree, the one that would probably teach me most and be most interesting would be in biology, botany, or biochemistry.

Google’s web browser

Google is in the process of rolling out a web browser, called Chrome. The defining characteristics are mostly on the back end, in terms of how it deals with processes and memory addressing. That being said, the foundation is being laid for what ought to be an unusually stable and secure browser.

The whole thing is explained in this comic book. The beta version is available for Windows, but we Mac users need to keep waiting for a while yet.

P.S. Another piece of software I am excited about is Spore. I have been a big appreciator of SimCity, SimAnt, and the like. The opportunity to evolve intelligent organisms on my shiny new computer is one I anticipate eagerly.

Climate action withdrawn

The Government of British Columbia has suddenly decided to retract my Climate Action Dividend (discussed here before). Previously, they had decided to issue them to anyone who filed a provincial tax return in 2006 or 2007. Now, they are being retracted from everyone who was not a resident of BC as of December 31st, 2007. This strikes me as rather poor planning on their part. The administrative costs of re-collecting the money will form a deadweight loss, and the government will henceforth have less credibility when issuing credits of this kind.

I suppose I will need to pack up and return my compact fluorescent bulbs, returning the inefficient incandescent ones to the sockets, remove the weather stripping from my doors and windows, switch back to my old and inefficient hot water system, swap out my low-flow showerhead, partially deflate the tires on my vehicle, and rip out my new crawl space insulation… Actually, I probably directed the money towards paying down student loans.

This can be dubbed the “Oh, wait. You are probably not going to vote in the next BC election, are you?” retraction.

Non-alcoholic beer

For various reasons, I have lately found myself investigating non-alcoholic beers: basically looking for one as tasty as the better alcoholic offerings. So far, my success has been limited. I find this a bit odd, given that the only people likely to buy non-alcoholic beer are those who (a) have a considerable fondness for beer but (b) don’t want to drink the alcoholic form, for whatever reason. As such, you would expect the de-alcoholized offerings to be of a premium variety; those I have found so far have been largely sub-par.

Of the three I have tried so far, unambiguously the worst is Kaliber, which is produced by the St. James’s Gate Brewery. The makers of Guiness certainly have not distinguished themselves with this tasteless, watery offering. Much better than Kaliber, though still somewhat lacking, is the de-alcoholized version of Beck’s. It definitely lacks something of the original, but it is passable. Quite possibly, my familiarity with the normal version of this brew makes the de-alcoholozed version seem worse in comparison.

The best option I have found so far is the President’s Choice ‘Red Brew.’ It is both the cheapest and the tastiest de-alcoholized beer I’ve tried, costing just $7 for 12 cans. The Beck’s, which tastes significantly worse than the PC brew, costs about $12 for 6 bottles – as much as the highly taxed liquor store version. Served cold, the PC brew has a pretty strong and pleasing flavour, suitable for summer work-night barbecues, and the like. It cannot touch quality alcoholic beers – like the Unibroue and McAuslan offerings – but it is at least a respectable beverage.

Are there any other varieties people would recommend? I am not bothered about whether they are actually 0% alcohol (like the Beck’s) or 0.5% (like the PC Red).

[Update: 5 November 2009] Thanks to everyone who provided additional information below. It’s good to see that so many other people are interested in finding tasty non-alcoholic beers. Please keep the suggestions coming.

Sleep and slime moulds

Since I spent the last fourteen hours sleeping, I don’t have much of interest to convey right now.

As a consolation, here is a time lapse video of slime moulds and fungus growing. I have always found slime moulds rather fascinating. They start of as single-celled, bacteria-eating organisms resembling amoebas. If two with matching mating types encounter one another, they can form a zygote. That, in turn, becomes a macroscopic organism with many nuclei, but no membranes between cells – an “interconnected network of protoplasmic strands.” Once this has eaten everything nearby, fruiting bodies form that disperse spores. These hatch into single-celled bacteria-eating eukaryotes once again.

One of the more odd and charming sections from the Wikipedia entry on slime moulds is this:

In 2006, researchers at the University of Southampton and the University of Kobe reported that they had built a six-legged robot whose movement was remotely controlled by a Physarum slime mold. The mold directed the robot into a dark corner most similar to its natural habitat.

It is disconcerting to consider that an entity consisting of an amalgamation of amoebas can apparently display something akin to preferences when put in control of a robot (though I think the ‘control’ just consisted of watching how the slime mould moved and copying it). This article has a picture of the robot.

In any case, I am hoping that my period of hibernation will reset my brain. During the last few days, it has sunken into something akin to – but nonetheless more profound than – the normal August lull which permeates Ottawa.

Abbreviation confusion

Signal that you spend too much time thinking about climate change: you see a teenager wearing a shirt that says ‘THC’ and assume he is expressing concern about the integrity of the thermohaline circulation.

Incidentally, it is worth remembering the difference between acronyms (which use the first letters in a phrase to produce a word you can speak) and abbreviations, which are spoken letter by letter. As such, ‘self contained underwater breathing apparatus’ becomes the acronym SCUBA while ‘United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’ becomes the abbreviation UNFCCC.

Farewell to Emily

Emily is off today: wisely fleeing the city of Ottawa before the slide towards winter accelerates. Back in May, she was charged with assessing the ‘coolness’ of Ottawa. Her very concise conclusions are now available.

Her departure is much to be regretted, though I would surely choose the same course myself if not bound here by unique employment opportunities. In any case, some photos of the summer are available online: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII.

Back from Vermont

Today, Emily and I made our way safely back to Ottawa. We also played what may have been the first ever game of Scrabble Hold-Em, with generally positive reviews.

Tomorrow, it is back to work – to face a ‘pending’ pile of unknown size and content.

P.S. As native Vancouverites, it is unusual for Emily and I to come home and find significant growth of fungal and insect life inside of our dwelling after twelve days away. Evicting the fruit flies seems likely to be a time consuming process. Ottawa’s heat and humidity takes getting used to, on several quite different fronts.