And I’m not talking about that pesky butterfly that keeps making hurricanes. There’s an actual Weather Modification Office in Beijing, tasked with ending droughts, firefighting, and now making sure that the weather is nice for the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games.
This came up in a special I just saw on CBC called, cleverly enough, “Beijing 2008″, about how China is preparing for the games. I love the Olympics, right down to the theme song (as has been well documented—it actual gives me goosebumps), so it was a good show for me.
Now, really all the Weather Modification Office can do is make it rain sooner rather than later, so if it looks like it’s going to rain on the opening ceremonies, they can seed the clouds and hopefully make it rain the day before instead. Something along those lines. It’s hard to say whether it actually works or not (it definitely won’t stop a big storm) but the Chinese government seems to be banking on it. They’ve guaranteed clear skies for the event.
If you’ve been reading anything about the games, you might have also heard that they’re cutting down on polluting cars. At first all I heard was that they’re just reducing numbers, but they’ve also got special cameras that, much like speed cameras can detect how fast you’re going so the police can pull you over, can detect how much pollution a car is giving out. And just like speeding, they pull you over and can even ban the car from the road. All in the hopes that marathon runners (among others) will have clear(er) air to breathe this summer.
What good is it having two showers if you can only use one at a time?
Recently somebody implied that I was being a big couch potato because I wrote a few posts about television. Well for the record, yes, a little bit, but only when I’m home.
My last two weeks have been spent mostly either at work or the local rowing club. It’s interesting going to different clubs (this is my third) and comparing them. The one in Vancouver was a well established affair, a social club with a relatively big and fancy club house with employees and everything to boot. Then of course at McGill it was a university club where the focus was on training, coaches putting you through your paces at every turn and not giving any slack.
It’s hard to tell what exactly exists at my current club. The program I’m in is pretty much dominated by kids from the local high school teams. Though I’m told there are senior rowers around, there is certainly nothing regular or organized. I certainly miss the intensity of the university crew. We have had a couple days where we did erging or running and I was thoroughly worn out by the end, but the days we can get on the water—the area is notorious for thick endless fog—are decidedly less intense.
The thing I miss most is having a set crew. You knew as your alarm went off at 5 am that there would be seven other guys down at the water counting on you to be there, not to mention the cox and coach. If one guy didn’t show up, everybody suffered. Train together, win together.
Mythbusters is an awesome show, as we’re already well aware. The problem though, is that it airs later than I should be staying up to watch it but it still manages to suck me in every time.
Of course I want to know if cockroaches will really survive a nuclear holocaust. Of course I need to stay up an extra hour to see two fully loaded transport trucks collide head-on. I really do need to know if vodka makes a decent mouthwash.
The problem is made that much worse by the fact that the show is very repetitive. After every commercial break we’re told what the myth is, how they’re going to bust it, what they’ve done so far, and what they’re going to do next. On top of that, they tell us again before every break. That’s great if I’m just flipping through channels and I’ve missed the first forty minutes, but when I’m there from the start and all I want to see is the answer, it gets kind of annoying.
They could probably do the show quite well in half an hour, without cutting out anything but the redundant narrations and the “coming up next” bits. Sure, I know these myths might be expensive and time consuming, but I need to work in the morning. I think lots of scientists are familiar with that mild disappointment when months of work are distilled into a single number or sentence in the conclusion of a short paper, with all those dead ends and hours of refining technique swept under the rug. You’ll get used to it.
I’ve been watching TLC’s Miami Ink a fair bit recently. It’s a good show, but there’s a serious problem with it: It really makes you want to get a tattoo, but also shows you that your reason for getting one isn’t good enough.
The first time I saw it was probably about two years ago, when there was a marathon playing. Though I knew the show existed, it had never occurred to me to watch it because, seriously, who wants to watch a show about a tattoo parlor? But my sister claimed it was good, at the same time warning me about what she had noticed, which is the first part of the problem I already mentioned. It kind of makes you want to get a tattoo. All these other people are getting tattoos. The tattoo artists talk about how great tattoos are. And they often just look cool.
The other part of the problem comes from the narratives that the customers tell about why they’re getting the tattoos. A large proportion of them are getting memorial tattoos, commemorating a lost family member or best friend. Some of them are recovering from drug addiction and want to mark a new phase of their life. Parents get tattoos of their kids’ names. Stuff like that.
And here I am thinking I want to get a tattoo just because I saw it on TV. Why do you have to torment me like that, Miami Ink? I suppose it is just as well, though, since if I were to get a tattoo I’d want my reason to be at least because I actually want one rather than TV told me to. Considering I start to crave a Big Mac every time a MacDonald’s commercial comes on the air, I think I need to stay far away from television before making a decision about anything more permanent than lunch.
I had just finished my least favourite exercise at the gym tonight when a woman got my attention to say that the exercise wasn’t a good one to be done alone, and was worried I could hurt my back. The reason I dislike this particular exercise ran along those lines already, but I did it because that’s the workout we did when I was doing it as part of winter training with a workout buddy.
Of course, I’m always willing to improve myself and my workout (otherwise I wouldn’t be at the gym in the first place), so I asked this woman what I should do to fix the problem. First she said, “You should try using this machine instead,” pointing to a second piece of the same equipment. Huh? I asked for clarification, and she mentioned some other ways of using the same equipment but work totally different muscle groups. Now this woman had credentials of sorts, so I was inclined to take her advice, but even I know that arms and legs are different muscles.
The conversation was going nowhere fast. I started getting a defensive vibe from her, which made me think I was making her think I didn’t believe her or wasn’t interested. So, we quickly dropped it and went our separate ways. It kept bugging me though. I’m more than happy to switch this exercise for another, but what was she talking about? What exactly had her criticism been? What could I do to avoid the problem? What was going on?
I caught up with her later to ask a few questions and see what advice she might have, trying very hard to seem open to the conversation and willing to fix what she saw as something bad in my routine. I don’t think she took it well. I was trying to strike up a friendly conversation—something I rarely do with strangers!—and even had conversation to make, but she still came off as highly defensive, as if I was attacking her opinion. She was actually a bit of a bitch about it.
I had a philosophy professor who used to say that in order to say something is wrong, you have to be able both to point out what exactly is wrong and how to fix it. I never really agreed that you needed the second part, but it certainly would have been nice in this case. Now I’m left at the mercy of the internet, googling for new exercises to replace what I’ll be too self-conscious to do again, instead of getting… well, advice from a random stranger. I guess I’m no worse off.
When I’m not listening to CBC during the drive to and from work, it’s a mix CD my mom made. It is her car after all. There are a handful of songs I like, but most I just skip over.
There was one that I was sure was a Madonna song, which I wouldn’t have expected from my mom but she does have varied tastes. For weeks I just skipped it after the first three seconds or so, but then one day I was distracted by something (possibly keeping my eye on the road) and let the song play. After about 10 or 20 seconds, what I was sure was a Madonna song turned into what I know is an ABBA song. I don’t know which ABBA song, but I recognized part of the music from an ABBA mashup techno megamix thing I had once. A melody of glissandos. I’d sing it for you but you can’t type that.
So then I stopped skipping the song. I didn’t want to have anything to do with Madonna, but an ABBA song is fine by me. If it came out today, I thought, it would probably do well. It could easily fit in with the pop charts of the day, as far as I knew. I got into the habit of listening to it on my way to the gym, as it was a good kind of song to get a person pumped up and bouncy.
I figured I should get a copy for myself and maybe add it to my erg playlist—something which requires lots of pumping up. The only problem was that at the very beginning the vocals say, with the beat, “Time goes by… so slowly… time goes by…. so slowly” which is the last thing someone wants to hear at any point during, say, a ninety minute steady state.
Nonetheless I figured I could edit that part out and the rest would be good, so I asked my mom what the name of that ABBA song on her CD was.
“ABBA song? What ABBA song?”
“You know, the one that goes like (me singing melodic glissandos)”
Damn you Battlestar Galactica and your mid-season finale!
Here I was, sure that since it was only ten episodes into the final season, BSG would last me through the summer, building up to its grand series finale. Then, they had to go start airing a promo on Space saying “THE LAST EPISODE UNTIL 2009!”
