Life After the Steady Job

I was out on the Ottawa River this morning, in June, at 8:30 a.m. Sitting quietly in my yellow kayak, watching the blue water, blue sky, ducks, an orange hull of a sailboat in the distance near the Quebec shore to the north, and a small red-and-white lighthouse in Dick Bell Park by the marina. Thinking to myself, well, this sure beats racing downtown on the crowded bus to sit in a beige cubicle all day. On the way back home, and I can paddle right to my back-yard gate om a tributary of the Ottawa River, I stopped to pick up a discarded red plastic pail, and a 4-liter plastic container half-full of anti-freeze from the marshes. I also stopped to watch a big turtle the size of a dinner-plate. And I paddled slowly past a large white egret so as not to scare it off. Lot's of time to see things. And the only reason I had to turn back and go home was because I had to pee. I think this is the freedom people yearn for. So great! Thank you for reading, Northstar

Diet Coke vs Coca-Cola Zero in Canada

I have two cans in front of me. A black one - Coke Zero. And a silver one - Coke Diete or Diet Coke in Canada. Both 355 ml. The silver one says sugar-free cola. The black one says, simply, Cola 0 Sucre or 0 Sugar Cola depending on which side of the can you are reading.
Listed Ingredients on each can in order of quantity:
(1) SILVER: carbonated water BLACK: carbonated water
(2) SILVER: caramel colour BLACK : caramel colour
(3)* SILVER: phosphoric and citric acid BLACK: phosphoric acid
(4) SILVER: aspartame BLACK: aspartame
(5)* SILVER: flavour BLACK: potassium benzoate
(6)* SILVER: sodium benzoate BLACK: natural flavour
(7)* SILVER: caffeine BLACK: potassium citrate
(8) SILVER: acesulfame-potassium BLACK: acesulfame-potassium
(9) BLACK: caffeine.

In conclusion, the Zero has no citric acid, has natural flavour, contains potassium in the form of both potassium benzoate and potassium citrate (well, okay, here is your citric acid after all), and has less caffeine. The cans say that the BLACK can has 40 mg sodium vs 50 mg for the SILVER but no potassium quantity is included in the Nutrition Facts part of the label. Taste test? I will get back to you.

Thank you for reading
Northstar

Milk in the Morning

I drink milk in the morning. To be precise I drink a cafe au lait in the morning. If I have leftover coffee in the coffee maker, I pour half a cup of this and half a cup of milk, heat in the microwave and voila! If I have no coffee, it's a full cup of milk heated, and then a spoonful of instant coffee stirred in. Quick, tasty, doesn't aggravate the sensitive stomach first thing in the morning. It's my routine. Can be poured into a travel mug for a quick getaway, with a pre-packaged granola bar or two. Breakfast on the run.  
In 2012 we get our milk in plastic bags. It is the least-expensive way to buy milk at the grocery store. Four liters of milk are packed into three clear, rectangular plastic milk bags. Then three bags are packed into a larger bag that has all of the manufacturer's advertising and information printed on it. There is some coordination of a colour-coding scheme amongst manufacturers. Pale blue usually means skim milk which has 0% fat content, red is whole milk over 3% fat content that is homogenized (which means stirred into homogeneity or sameness), purple is 1%, dark blue is 2%. . . you get the idea.  
Recently, the dairy manufacturers have been marketing a more expensive milk called filtered milk. It is supposed to taste better and is processed differently, well it is heat pasteurized same as regular milk but then it is filtered. Apparently this improves the taste and makes it cost almost twice as much.  As an example, four liters of regular milk retails for something like $4.39 whereas the same volume of filtered milk can be over seven dollars. To differentiate the filtered milk once you get it home, the manufacturers have started putting this more expensive milk into clear, blue plastic bags. Personally, I am hard pressed to tell the difference in taste except that the skim milk does seem a bit less thin and watery. 
At any rate the filtered milk was on sale this week for four dollars so I grabbed a bag of it and put it in the upstairs bar fridge until I needed it. Which was this morning. So, being out of milk first thing Sunday morning, I walked upstairs in slippers and housecoat to get a clear blue bag of filtered skim milk for my cafe au lait. Downstairs in the kitchen again, I put the bag in my rigid plastic milk-bag jug which is cleverly disguised as a Holstein cow, as someone has painted black markings on its white milk-jug body. Sadly, the cow has a very stumpy tail as I once dropped the milk jug and snapped its handle off. It fits better into my fridge this way, I rationalize to myself in order to keep this broken object about the house. 
I get the kitchen scissors and nip a corner off the clear blue bag of milk. Try to pour it into my cup. Nothing. I look closer with bleary morning vision. Well, that's just typical. I nipped off the wrong corner, the corner closest to the stumpy handle. Makes it hard to pour. Now comes the job of pulling out the milk bag that now leaks from a hole I cut in the top corner, flipping it around, and coaxing it back into the container without squeezing all the milk out the hole. Aah, cafe au lait.  
Quick. Think of all the beings you should be thanking for bringing this milk to your table. This meal arises from the labour of all beings, may we remember their offering. The cows whose pooled milk went into my cup. Their calves. The bulls who provided the sperm donation for the cows to get pregnant and produce milk. Many dairymen and dairywomen who looked after the cows and those before them who took care of all the domesticated bovine ancestors. The agricultural engineers who designed the dairy barn and all it's equipment. The farm owner and their employees. The person who grows the feed. The veterinarian, and the veterinary college. The truck drivers, motor vehicle repair people, warehouse workers, tire manufacturers, rubber tree growers, and foundry workers. The milk manufacturers, Dairy Board members, sales agents, and the artists who design the packaging and advertising. Grocery store managers, their employees, accountants, lawyers, investors, family and friends. People who repair the roads, fix refrigeration units, sell rigid plastic jugs, make plastics. Synthetic chemists who developed the plastics, Hydro power workers who give us electricity, refinery workers for the fuel, tool pushes to keep the oil wells welling and battery operators for keeping the pump jacks pumping. Leaf cutter bees for pollinating the alfalfa. You get the picture.  Thanks to all beings for my cafe au lait this morning. And I never even got to thinking about the coffee.

Easter on April 8th

My friend Squid asked me today: when was the last time that Easter Sunday was on April 8th, and did it fall on April 8th every seven years, and did a Leap Year matter?
Oh boy, how to answer that.
Well, I said blithely, Easter can vary by over a month; it is the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox. Leap Years had nothing to do with it. That being said I double-checked my facts.
I found that Easter Sunday can fall anywhere from March 22nd to April 25th. The last time Easter was on April 8th was just a few short years ago, in 2007. But don't be fooled, Squid. The time before that was in 1928. And the next time Easter falls on April 8th, I will be dead and buried long ago.
So yes, the first Sunday after the first Full Moon after the Spring Equinox was right. Except, oh there always has to be an exception, except when that date just happens to be the date of the Jewish Passover, in which case Easter is a full week later. I didn't know that!
The Equinox, now what exactly is that? she wanted to know. Well Squid, there are two equinox dates in a year, one in March and one in September. You know that the shortest day is in late December in the North, and the longest day is in late June? Well, the Equinox is in between those two, when the day is almost exactly twelve hours and the night is almost exactly twelve hours. In fact the word Equinox means equal night in Latin. And the Equinox is also when the sunrise is directly in the east and the sunset is directly in the west. Due east and due west; it only happens on the Equinox. It's usually the 21st or 22nd of March and September. And the full moon, well we all know that the moon is at its fullest every 28 days or so the timing of Easter can vary by 28 days or more. So there you have it. It's all about the full moon when the sunrise is due East. Easter. East. Get it?
Thanks for reading
NorthStar

1948

For some reason I started looking into things that happened in 1948. Here's my list. Please overlook the fact that I haven't figured out how to do European diacritical marks, or em dashes either, in a blog posting.

• Cointreau was registered as a trademark in Canada.
• The movie Hamlet was released, starring Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, etcetera.
• Albert Einstein's wife, Mileva Maric, died.
• The first printing of Dr. Seuss's Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose was copyrighted by Random House. Wish I had a copy of that first edition.
• The SCRABBLE Brand Crossward Game, invented by Alfred Mosher Butts, was trademarked by James Brunow in 1948. The first sets were manufactured in 1949 (2400 sets, at a loss of $450 for the new business). Wish I had a set of that first edition. Current copyright owner is HASBRO in the U.S. and J.W. Spear and Sons, PLC, outside of the U.S. (a subsidiary of Mattell, Inc.)
• Swiss hiker and dog owner, George de Mestrel, came up with the brilliant idea of velcro, the name of which he made up from velour and crochet. After several years of experimentation, he patented a process for making velcro from nylon in 1955 and founded Velcro Industries, the current manufacturer of the registered trademark product VELCRO.
• Andrew Lloyd Webber was born in London, U.K. Phantom of the Opera, here we come!
• The first Hell's Angels Motorcycle Club was founded on 17 March, 1948, in the Fontana/San Bernardino area of California. The San Bernardino (Berdoo) club charter still exists today. (Ref: www.hells-angels.com)
• The Summer Olympic Games were held in London, U.K. and included the founding of the Union International de Modern Pentathlon.
• Ghandi-ji was assassinated, 30 January.
• A prototype custom sports cabriolet was built; it was a one-off aluminum-bodied prototype car and one of two prototypes built in 1948 by Hans Waibel for Dr. Porsche. All future Porsches were still to come. This particular car was fully restored in 1988--1992 and came up for sale most recently in 2010 at a value of, oh, let's say, half a million or so. Nobody knows for sure.
• The movie The Naked City as in "there are eight million stories in the naked city. . .", narrated by producer Mark Hellinger, and directed by Jules Dassin, is released.
• The Calgary Stampeders won the Grey Cup.
• The Toronto Maple Leafs won the Stanley Cup.
• The New York City Ballet (George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein) was born.
• In South Africa, the election of May 1948 ushered in the new Reunited National Party of Daniel Francois Malan, and ousted the United Party of Jan Smuts. The new government only got a popular vote of 37% but won because of the "First past the post system", which is what we have here in Canada. The ousted party got a popular vote of 49% but still lost. The first legislation of the Reunited National Party, which was passed in the next year, was something entitled "The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act of 1949". Sounded promising, doesn't it. I hope some people lost sleep over this in 1949. At least we never had that, in Canada. You couldn't marry the same sex, back then (a prohibition of unmixed marriages act?), but you can now.
• "Cougar Shoes since 1948", trademark of Coug and Company, Inc.
• The Declaration of the State of Israel was signed by Canada and others on 14 May, 1948. Lester B. Pearson, not yet the Canadian Prime Minister nor yet a Nobel Laureate, had been Chairman of the U.N. General Assembly's Special Committee on Palestine since 1947 and working on this.
• Shipments of Cuvee Dom Perignon Champagne to North America, that had stopped from 1939--1947 because of World War II, resumed.
• PEZ, Frisbee, and Styrofoam were all trademarked in 1948.
• My brother MarkAngus (1948--2008) was born. Oh yes, this is why I started on this. I remember now. Requiem in pace, MarkAngus. I'll think of you next time I see a Frisbee. Or a Porsche.

Roomba and Old Dog sharing space and time

Just let me say this. Roombas are not designed to shovel up shit. Not even the "Pet Series". Enough said.
Thanks for reading
Northstar

Favourite Abuse of Language for March 2012

In March 2012, the Government of Canada-- known affectionately as GOC by insiders-- took action to stop a lockout of three thousand airline pilots by nobody's favourite airline, Air Canada. The lockout threat had been timed to coincide with the school spring break period, a time when many parents would have made airline travel plans for their families. In response to the GOC action, Paul Strachan, President of the Air Canada Pilot's Association, was quoted as having said: "It's like negotiating with a monkey with the organ grinder standing behind you with a Sword of Damocles over your head" canoe.ca March 8 2012.
Air Canada as the monkey. GOC as an organ grinder. It is not clear if the Sword of Damocles is being held by the GOC organ grinder, or is in its traditional position hanging by a horse's hair from the ceiling over Damocles's head. The pilots union as Damocles? Okay, so it's not a mixed metaphor but it certainly is a complicated simile.
I want to know, is the monkey wearing little blue sailor pants? Does he have a cute red waistcoat (pronounced weskit for those not of the British Empire in rearing)? A waistcoat with, perhaps, shiny brass buttons and gold braid on it? Does the organ grinder look like an Italian Gypsy? Does he have a peg leg? Is he mean to the monkey? Why is Damocles negotiating with a monkey in the first place? How does Damocles figure into this organ-grinding scene at all?
Damocles (representing the pilots) was a court sycophant living about 2500 years ago, and King Dionysios got so sick of him sucking up that he suggested Damocles should try being a ruler for a while and see how he liked it. In the midst of an opulent feast, Damocles (who had been liking it pretty well, up to then) noticed a sword had been hung by a single horse's hair over his head. He felt, not surprisingly, threatened by this and opted for a simpler, less opulent, and safer life than that of a ruler. Cicero describes the sword scene as follows: "fulgentum gladium e lacunari saeta equina aptum demitti iussit". Cicero, a Roman writer living about 2200 years ago, makes no mention of monkeys or organ grinders.
We all wish the pilot's association would opt for a simpler, less opulent, and safer life and not desire to become a group of tyrants. If Damocles is negotiating with a monkey, he should figure out why he is working for a monkey in the first place and stop trying to confuse us with perverse imagery.
I'll wager that Capt. Strachan has not recently read any Cicero. If I am right, here is a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero for him, in English: "Neither can embellishments of language be found without arrangement and expression of thoughts, nor can thoughts be made to shine without the light of language".
Thank you for reading
NorthStar