Feeling blue?

For the last while I've been trying out an alternative form of swearing. Rather than use the standard f-bomb for everything, "That f-ing f-er really f-ed up this time!", I'm using another equally flexible, but more socially acceptable word: "Smurf". The cartoon Smurfs used this word for everything, in the same way that some people use f&*$, but Smurf can be used for everything!
I was talking about this with B-monster this morning, and strayed into the subject of cleaned-up movie dialog. Some movies, when sanitized for TV, actually become much funnier. I'm thinking of Repo Man as a good example: "Flip you, melonfarmer!"

So how about one of my favourite movies, Aliens, done with "Smurf"?

Hudson: Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a smurf?
Vasquez: No. Have you?

Hudson: [puts his rifle against Burke's head] I say we grease this rat-smurf son-of-a-smurf right now.

Ripley: I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Hudson: Smurfin' A...

Hudson: Well that's great, that's just smurfin' great, man. Now what the smurf are we supposed to do? We're in some real pretty smurf now man...

Hudson: That's it man, game over man, game over! What the smurf are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do?

Ripley: Get away from her, you *smurf!*

Vasquez: You always were a smurf, Gorman!

Perspective

I just finished watching "The Shadow of the Moon", a documentary about the Apollo astronauts. Brilliant film. It got me thinking about this:

This is the famous "Pale Blue Dot" image taken by Voyager 1. The tiny dot in the center is the Earth, from 4 billion miles away.

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light."

-- Carl Sagan
From "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space," Random House, 1994

So think about this the next time you're fuming about the price of gas, or the latest celebrity idiocy, or some other trivial issue. And think about how critical this little speck in the darkness is to our survival. This is all there is.

A few of my favourite things...

I just found out this exists. *GRIN!!!*

I'll take the red pill...no the blue pill!!!... no red!!

Ok, I know it's been a while, perhaps I'll explain that later, but for now, I'm revved up and have to rant.

Ages ago, my friend B-man lent me a book called "Manufacturing Consent" by Noam Chomsky. Now, I'm not much for heavy analysis or serious philosophical thinking at this point in my life, but today I decided to dig into it. I'm halfway through the goddamn introduction and I'm already pissed off! Many of the points were things I'd already noticed on my own, but it's something else to see your possibly paranoid musings confirmed by experts.

The gist of it is that the mass media (tv, film, books, magazines, etc) are being controlled by fewer and fewer giant corporations, and that they also have political/economic agendas. The book points out the decline of actual journalism. Remember that? When actual reporters would go and investigate something, dig up facts, confirm things? Hell, now most "news" is just dressed up press releases from governments or corporations laundered through PR bastards. These PR spin doctors massively outnumber actual journalists. Hell, these professional liars' jobs are to sell us this BS.
The most glaringly obvious for the last decade or so has been Fox News. Former Bush press secretary Scott McLellan (a.k.a. the mouth of Sauron), has come out and admitted that they basically wrote the scripts for Fox's talking heads and pundits (def. loud mouth asshole). Throw another shovel of dirt on unbiased reporting.
And don't think it's been just the latest bunch of ratfucks who have been doing this; this kind of thing goes back to at least Reagan, not further, and no, it does not skip Clinton. When Saddam Hussein was persecuting Kurds, it was called 'genocide' on occasion. When Turkey was doing it, is was reluctantly referred to as 'repression'. Same evil, but it isn't so bad when your buddy does it.
Anyhoo, back to the point. Media and reporting is being controlled by a few economically and politically powerful groups. Reporting on reality has been replaced by infotainment and drivel. Bread and Circuses, as the Romans used to say. Mushroom management: keep 'em in the dark and feed 'em bullshit. The play up the atrocities of their opponents while hiding those of their friends. And all the while they parade the newest shiny trinkets in your face to distract you more.
Don't think they're hiding stuff? The one that struck me years ago, was the 1999 WTO meeting in Seattle. I only knew this because I happened to have a friend e-mailing me from there at the time. It seems the protest got a wee bit enthusiastic, and the authorities cracked down. A major American city was essentially under martial law for several day....and there was barely a peep about it. Seems like that would be a pretty big story. Later on a few stories snuck out, strictly amateur stuff as the big names still wouldn't touch it. I guess they'd been told.
So, the goal seems to be to tell us what they need to get us to react the way they want, and so we keep buying more and more and just going along in ignorant, apethetic bliss. Your government is supporting people who are killing and torturing? No, little children, they're supporting freedom against terrorists/rebels/communists (insert label here). But never you mind, just watch another episode of Baywatch, drink another beer, and think about how you'll pay for the gas for that ten-ton battlecruiser SUV in your driveway (you know the one, you take in half a mile to the store to load up on hyper-process, artificial, food-like fodder for the grazing trough. The thing that has 4 wheel drive, satellite navigation, active suspension, seats 50 and can climb an 80 degree grade, but has never been off pavement! Remember? The thing that put you so far in debt that you're an indentured servant to some financial industry loanshark.) We'll take the screaming brats (overweight from doing nothing but play videogames, and hyper and incoherent from being stuffed with sugar-soaked garbage) to the latest 90 minute long, formula drivel from Hollywood, where they can eat more shit, play more games, and be further indoctinated into the cult of BUYBUYBUY!!!. Then we can get them all the associated merchandise (all produced by foreigners working in near slavery conditions), so they can be occupied for five minutes before we chuck the junk in the nearest landfill for future (ha!) generations to find.
But trust us. We'll do what's right. Just be good herd animals. Stand out in the field grazing and getting fat with a dull glaze in your eyes. And when one of you disappears every once in a while, don't worry, they're just being detained indefinitely, without charge, in a secret prison, in another country, where they're being taught how to swim - upside down in a chair. Or be made into hamburger, to return to the analogy.
We're living in The Matrix. We're living in an artificial fantasy, being force-fed crap 24/7 by folks who profit from us being just that way. To be honest, it can be tempting to just play dumb and go along in blissful ignorance.

Wow, that's quite a rant for half a chapter! Actually, I've had a lot of that building up for a while.
Maybe it comes from age and/or wisdom, but I've been starting to see patterns is the world that I do not like. I feel a great disturbance in the force. I've been seeing the mountains of bullshit from south of the border, and from our "leaders" (doesn't that mean 'one who leads', not 'one who does what the lobbyists want'?) here. I'm disgusted with consumer culture and the need for more and more crap. I've been as guilty as any in the past for craving junk, but I hope I'm finally growing out of it.

Ok, that's enough rambling for now. My bile has subsided. More angry outbursts to come!

But I don't have six fingers!

I love this:

I'm baaacckkkk!!!!!

Right. The maintenance outage I was assigned to is over, and I'm back to my regular job and schedule. After 2 months of working alternating day and night 12 hour shifts (switching every 5 or 6 days!), I'm certainly ready for a rest. Unfortunately, most of the extra money I earned doing this was sunk into that black hole called debt. Oh well.

Anyhoo....

I came across this little gem on Wil Wheaton's blog. It's a music service called Magnatune, and it claims to be not evil. They boast CD quality downloads (MP3's are NOT CD quality), no DRM "broken by design" crap, 50% of revenue to the artist (as opposed to the pittance the RIAA deigns to give them, despite all their claims otherwise), Full previews (listen to it all before you buy), and pay what you think is fair! Plus a few other things. This sounds exceedingly cool. And the music is stuff you won't get from the mainstream.

I haven't checked it out entirely yet (or purchased anything), but this is a breath of fresh air amid the vile copyright servitude coming from the major producers these days with their "Just because you paid for it, you have no rights to do anything with it, and we're installing a secret spy program on your computer to make sure you don't, btw it also wrecks your security so hackers can have their way with you, and one more thing: we now own your spleen. The surgeon will be around next Tuesday. Any attempts to bypass this security will result in our horde of lawyers sueing you and everyone you've ever met. Remember this is for the sake of the artists, whom we give one-billionth of a percent of all sales." attitude.

"...I became chronologically fucked-up"

Note the title is from the Tragically Hip's "Locked in the Trunk of a Car"

In my case it refers to the effect of switching to nights (7pm-7am) for 3 days, and now trying to get back to a more civilized circadian rhythm, or whatever. I finished the run of nights this morning, came home, ate, went to bed for a few hours, got up, and have been in a mild daze since. I'd just adapted to being asleep at this time, and here I am trying to get back in sync with the rest of the world again. My sense of what time it is is totally shot. Not wrong, just gone; like it simply gave up and left. Occasionally I have to remind myself, "This is Tuesday, right?" But I have time to adjust before going back to work on Friday morning. Then four day of days, and try to switch back to nights. Repeat until collapse.

Politics over Safety (and logic).

For the last couple of months there has been quite a stir in the Canadian nuclear world. The Chalk River reactor, the main source for medical isotopes, shut down for maintenance in November. The CNSC (the body responsible for overseeing nuclear safety in Canada) refused to let it start up again when it turned out that the owner (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd) had failed to complete safety upgrades in the 50 year old reactor. The upgrades were a condition of their operating license. The CNSC's obligation was to deny permission to start up again without these upgrades. They are responsible for safety, not medical supplies. They have clear regulations regarding this. And they are meant to operate without political interference.
So when supplies of medical isotopes became short, literally decaying away, in steps our Conservative government and passes legislation to restart the reactor despite the missing upgrades. And note that the Liberals went along with this. The minister of natural resources aimed the blame directly at CNSC president Linda Keen, claiming her stubbornness put the lives of medical patients at risk, and that since she was appointed by the previous Liberal government her decision was politically motivated.
Also be aware that the two new reactors intended as replacements for this aging one are 8 years behind schedule, and may never start up! Where were the ministers (first the Liberal, and then the current one)? Why weren't they investigating this delay?
I know in my workplace two of the key values they work hard to instill in employees are conservative (not in the political sense) decision making and adherence to procedures (rules). These are critical to a culture of safety in the nuclear industry. From what I've seen, Linda Keen was working to these values. She was doing her job properly.
Who fucked up? AECL, the last two ministers of natural resources, and the prime minister who fired Ms. Keen yesterday.
There has been much talk of a nuclear "renaissance". If this is going to happen, safety is primary. For that we need a credible regulator, free to do their job properly regardless of who looks bad because of it. PM Harper destroyed that credibility last night. As my friend B said today, "Harper just shot the Canadian nuclear industry in the head."

How do you compete against these people?!

Ok, it's no secret that I work in the nuclear power industry, and so I could be accused of some pro-nuke bias, but I saw this newspaper article that just amazed me with it's excessive anti-nuke slant. It was an AP story printed in the Prince George (B.C.) Citizen. The story is about a small radioactive water leak in a nuclear station in Ohio.
A couple of quotes from the story: "The amount of water from the pipe was so small when discovered Friday that it was not quantified in the report...", "It involved water from the reactor, so it is radioactive water but it is within the containment building and nothing was released. Our workers were not affected," he said.
Ok, so there's a very small leak, inside the containment structure. Sounds like only a minor hazard, nothing to freak about. But the thing that got me was the headline: "N-plant leaking into Lake Erie". Factually contradicted by the story itself, and clearly just used to grab attention. Hell, why not call it "Ultra dangerous, hyper-nuclear, death klabooie!!!"

Quality time.

I just returned from taking Spousal-Unit back to her apartment so she can continue with school and work next week. She was able to arrange a week off to come here and visit with me and the furry folks. Unfortunately, just before coming here, she picked up a flu/cold thing from her sister and spent the first part of the week feeling miserable. We had to postpone a get-together with B-meister and his wife W. We figured a couple of days delay while spouse recovers, no big deal. Then, of course, I get sick. I spent the last half of the week feeling like warmed-over snail snot, with an oozing, goo-packed cranium and the effective I.Q. of a pro wrestling fan. Quote of the week: "uungghgghh...." (with appropriate nasal honk). I had to miss 2 days of work, which is now actually something I miss. Sadly we had to pass on B and W's invitation, which we had been looking forward to. When Spouse spoke to B on the phone he seemed upset, perhaps offended by this. I'll have to speak with him and apologize, but I simply didn't feel right going to their place, spreading microbes to them and their offspring, and staring at the wall in a medication induced stupor.

So, overall the week was not everything we had hoped for. But at least we were together.