1,000+ km and a new cat

I'm finally getting around to posting on a couple of newsworthy items (at least they are for me).

First, I achieved a minor milestone last week (well, almost two weeks ago, but who's counting) of having gone over 1,000 kilometers in the course of my daily commute to work. I have an odometer on my bike, which I attached a couple of weeks after I started my commute, so I have racked up maybe 100 km more than what it registered. No matter, it was kind of neat to see the numbers tick over from 999 to 1000.

The other event is that we welcomed today a 3-year old, chocolate point Siamese cat named "Joey" into our family. He's a real cutie, and once he calms down enough for me to take some pictures, I'll post some in my blog.

RIP: Bamse 926 and Severus Snape

I was shocked to learn this morning that one of the people I have regularly played Raven Shield with and chatted with over Ventrilo has died.

This person, whom I got to know as "Bamse" (which I learned today means "bear" in Norwegian) had been pretty much a fixture for the past year in the RvS clan to which I belong. I had gotten used to hearing his low, gravelly voice greeting me and other clan members as we joined the Ventrilo channel before we would begin gaming. In-game, I would greet him as "my socialist friend" given that the Norwegian and Canadian forms of government tend to be more left-leaning than the government of the American players who host the clan server. He would even invite me on occasion to come onto the Red side as if to reinforce the appearance of socialist solidarity and to tease our American friends. It might have been lost on everyone else, but I had the feeling Bamse and I shared that little bit of fun.

His death hit me all the harder as I biked home from work today. I had zoned out climbing a hill and I started thinking how unfair it was that Bamse was gone. Now, I didn't know much about his personal life, but I couldn't help but get the feeling from the time I had spent listening to him on comms that, sure, he had his share of warts, but that he was fundamentally a good person - and that if the opportunity had presented itself I would have met him in person, if only to get the measure of the man.

It saddens me greatly that I will not have the opportunity to hear him again and to know more of him. His death pushed me to ask the usual meaning-of-life and why-are-we-here questions, and I really hate when that happens, because my thinking ends up in why-can't-we-all-get-along and why-can't-people-see-that-other-people-are-important questions, then I get angry and disappointed and frustrated with humanity and my life, and I'd rather go live on a desert isle... And a fat lot of good that kind of thinking does, anyway. Sigh. It's just that Bamse's death is so damn tragic.

So Bamse, wherever you are, resquiat in pace, brother.

I guess what made it worse still was that I had read, and re-read, and re-re-read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I have to say that when I got to the end of the chapter entitled "The Elder Wand" and read through "The Prince's Tale," I cried. Really cried. Imagine, a 52-year old man, crying because a character in a kid's book dies.

Well, for anyone who know the Harry Potter series, Severus Snape is one of the least likeable characters. Even before the book came out, I was sure that Snape would not survive the series, but the way that JKR filled in the backstory on Snape took me completely by surprise, and made Snape, in my mind at least, someone for which I felt deeply. I felt anger at the way Snape had been treated by many of the main characters, but most of all, I was angry at the way life had treated him - how his childhood and the bullying had shaped his personality, or at least in the way that he would react to situations. For sure, Snape tread down the wrong path, but in the end his heart was in the right place and he was redeemed by his love for Lily. I guess I feel that kind of anger against life for the way Snape was dealt a crappy hand. I can't help but think that if circumstances were different, the outcome would have been quite different. I think of the scene where Dumbledore says to Snape: "Sometimes I think we Sort too soon." This leaves Snape looking "stricken." What if Snape had been sorted into Griffyndor?

So I'm left struggling with the same issue for Bamse and Snape. I grieve for both, and I'm angry at the injustice of seeing the lives of good men that come to a premature end.

I'll miss them both.

On the road...

I'm blogging from my first-ever series of site visits to some Quebec universities: Rimouski, Sherbrooke, Laval... I enjoy it, but the schedule is EXHAUSTING. At the end of a 2 hour visit (1 hour presentation, Q&As) I'm emotionally drained and I've had to drive for at least 3 hours a day for the past 3 days... thankfully, my last day is tomorrow (Laval), and I can look forward to a 5-hour drive home. Ugh.

I've become painfully aware of my lack of intimate familiarity (as opposed to nodding acquantance) of our postgraduate scholarships - our briefing notes are excellent, but it seems too much to cram into my small brain in so little time...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to administering my own committee competition. I'll finally be able to translate abstract information on our programs and integrate it into some concrete experience.

D'autre part, ça été toute une expérience de parler et de travailler complètement en français depuis quelques jours. D'une part, j'ai dû m'habituer à un environnement où l'anglais était complètement absent, et d'apprendre à communiquer uniquement dans une langue... mais dautre part, j'ai été surpris à comment rapidement je me suis ajusté à travailler dans l'absence de l'anglais. Intéressant.

Anyway, there's been lots more going on in my life, and I hope that I'll have the time to write about it later on.

Very scary story...

Here is a contemporary story of human rights abuse in North Korea that I found very hard to believe – until I remembered how the world initially received the news of Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

Imagine being a political prisoner BY BIRTH… born into a concentration camp, not having had any knowledge or experience of the outside world other than in the camp.

Frightening.

Even more frightening: that regimes exist today that foster such systems.

Harry Potter 7: My 15 hours of Deathly Hallows...

NOTE: NO SPOILERS! (Well at least, just a couple of spoilers related to two of the characters - I give a little bit on their characters and what happens to them in the book.)

I've just completed a marathon session of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (HP7). The book is, in one word, amazing.

I decided I would take my time and read it at leisure, so it took me 15 hours to read 600+ pages, which makes my reading speed 40 pages an hour, or about a minute and and a half per page. In the months leading up to the release of the book, I re-read all the previous books at least once (and the last 3 books at least twice). I also discussed aspects of the series with Klara and discussed various predictions of HP7. I'm glad I did, as it was with a prepared mind that I read this book.

Deathly Hallows is without question the "darkest" book of the series. Whereas there was much lightheartedness in the earlier tomes, this book is the reverse - there is much seriousness puctuated only occasionally by lightheartedness.

The previous 2 books Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince seemed "slow" at the time I read them initially - not much appeared to be happening in spots, and the books seemed to drag. In contrast, the action in Deathly Hallows starts very early and does not stop until the last chapter. It's been a long time since I've wanted to finish a book in one sitting, and I had no problem doing that with this book!

I had heard that JKR said that 2 main characters would die. In fact there are more than two deaths, and depending on how one defines a "main character," the body count is much higher than that. I successfully predicted the death of one of the characters, but I was suprised by the death of others. Some HP fans might be upset by the high body count, but anyone who is familiar with recent history (especially the rise of Nazi Germany - See Coming of the Third Reich and Third Reich In Power 1933 1939 by Richard Evans) can see to what extent ruthless people such as Voldemort and his Death Eaters will go. I can't help but think that JKR's time spent working for Amnesty International must have helped frame Voldemort's rise to power in her stories.

I couldn't help but be amazed by JKR's ability to weave complex but continuous story lines in the series, to throw in new plots and subplots for HP7, and to tie everything up in the conclusion. New materials and new characters appear in this book, and some characters that were present in previous books re-appear, so there is a pleasant combination of old and new.

I was also impressed by the moral and spiritual depth of the book. After reading the previous 6 books, and in discussions with Klara, I couldn't help but wonder how JKR regarded love, courage, death, and the afterlife in this book. I must say that each of these topics is addressed in some measure in the book, but I had hoped to read more of her vision on each of these. (Obviously, I've ignored the fact that this is a book meant for a younger readership!)


HERE BE AMBIGUOUSLY WORDED SPOILERS ===============

Two of the elements I enjoyed the most in the book relate to Albus Dumbledore and Severus Snape.

We learn more about Dumbledore in several parts of the book - there was a darker side to Albus than what we knew through the previous 6 books. We learn not only about his fallibility, but of his egotism, his selfishness, his ruthlessness, and his manipulativeness. As a result of this, I was not repelled by Dumbledore's character, but it made him more human and less of the (unreal) kind, gentle, grandfatherly figure from the earlier books.

On the other hand, Severus Snape, who appears to be a villain (and quite nasty in in HP7) redeems himself in Harry's eyes quite late in the book. I had suspected that Snape was not as evil as he appeared, particularly through his actions near the end of HP6, and HP7 fills in gaps in our understanding of Snape's motivation and his internal struggles.

END OF SPOILERS =========================


Perhaps the most important lesson that JKR wishes to teach us is that people are not what they seem, and that people change their philosophies and beliefs over time. Some people, like those mentioned in the spoiler, learn from the error of their ways, but others persist in error or even deepen their error as a result of a desire of power or importance. It's a lesson that should not be lost on us.

I also can't help but feel that JKR have written a series and most particularly this novel, for our times. The rise of Voldemort can be equated to the rise of Al-Qaeda or the early years of Nazism, where a small group of people use intimidation and terror to achieve the goal of instilling fear in the populace, fostering the distrust of their leaders, and culminating in the overthrow of government and seizure of power. This is another lesson for us to learn.

It was an emotional book as well. I cried in many spots, not just when a character died, but when a "point of no return" was reached, for example, when Harry leaves Aunt Petunia's for the last time and their final goodbyes. (This is not really a spoiler since all this really is set up at the end of Book 6.) There are many points like this in the book, and it is all the more poignant when the reader knows that this is happening in the last book of the series. JKR brings an element of finality to the book and the series, not through a single climactic event (although there is one), but through a series of crises scatterered through the book.

This is a great end to a great series. I'm just sad that it's all at an end.

Man with "tiny brain" is a civil servant

I couldn't pass this up.

 

In France, a man aged 44, father of 2 children, and working as a civil servant went to a hospital complaining of weakness in his leg.

 

In the course of getting his medical history, doctors learned that he had a childhood condition of hydrocephalus, and had a shunt put into his brain when he was an infant. The shunt was removed when he was 14.

 

Doctors decided to check on the condition of his brain and carried out a CT scan and an MRI.

 

They discovered "massive enlargements" of the brain ventricles (spaces that occur normally in the brain), and that the brain tissue itself was reduced to a thin layer lining the skull. Basically, this dude was working on 25% to 50% of what would be normal brain tissue space.

 

Would this lead to the generalization that civil servants have tiny brains?

 

;-)

 

 

Increased Cannabis use in Canada related to lower crime rate?

There was an article which appeared last week which stated that Canada is the top industrial nation in which the population aged 15-64 who have used marijuana within the past year (15.6%). We even beat out the Americans at 12.6%,  the Jamaicans at 10.7%, and the Dutch at 6.1%.  (Mind you, Canada has a ways to go, since it is ranked 5^th in the world, behind Papua New Guinea (29.5%), Micronesia (29.1%), Ghana (21.5%) and Zambia (17.7%).

 

And just this week, CBC reported that Canada's crime rate in 2006 was lowest in 25 years (in spite of the fact that youth crime rate had increased by 3%).

 

Hmm… I wonder if we're seeing a cause-and-effect here? If not, these observation MUST somehow be related to global warming, everything else is these days…