Gone fishin’

Me and the Better Third are off to God’s Country for the week.

Take care, be safe, and come back after September 9th.

Elementary school bans ‘tag’

This is even more stupid than it sounds:

“It causes a lot of conflict on the playground,” said Cindy Fesgen, assistant principal of the Discovery Canyon Campus school.

Running games are still allowed as long as students don’t chase each other, she said.

Fesgen said two parents complained to her about the ban but most parents and children didn’t object.

That’s right, “two parents complained” and they apply the ban to the whole school. They couldn’t have just instructed their kids — soon-to-be nicknamed “Wuss” and “Punching bag” by their peers — to simply not participate. No, they got to make the entire community bend to their concerns. Nice people, that.

via the Mayor, who writes: “One thing you do not want children doing is resolving conflicts on there own, that is why we have lawyers, advisory boards and panels.”

CFS losers lose

Strike a blow in favour of democratic PSE student governance:

The Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) lost a major appeal Monday in the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal, which upheld an earlier ruling that a membership referendum held in October 2005 at the University of Saskatchewan was invalid. The ruling has national significance because it argues that the CFS, Canada’s largest student lobby organization, cannot require students’ unions to set aside their referendum bylaws in favour of the CFS’.

Good. The less CFS on the U of S campus, the better.

This is why:

Regardless of the committee’s decision, the USSU was concerned that the CFS would launch legal action if it did not immediately take full membership. In a close vote, the USC decided to ignore the problems with the referendum and approve full membership in the CFS.

“When faced with a result that was not consistent with its wishes, the University Students’ Council simply ignored its own rules,” Judge R.S. Smith wrote in the original ruling that struck down the decision to join the CFS.

Smith also found that the referendum question put to students made no mention of the $9 fee per student to be paid to the CFS. The CFS would receive approximately $160,000 annually from the University of Saskatchewan’s 19,500 students.

Nice racket if you can get it.

Why I wear a ring on my pinky

Take a trip with me down Canadian engineering lore:

In 1907 Quebec was building the biggest cantilever bridge in the world. Little did they know that on August 29 that they would also experience one of the largest bridge collapses in history.

[...]

On June 15, 1907 an inspecting engineer noted that two girders of the anchor was misaligned by a quarter of an inch. [renowned New York bridge builder Theodore] Cooper called this a “not serious” problem. In the inspection report in August, 1907, it was noted that the girders had moved out alignment a bit more and “appeared bent”. Although this condition was a bit more concerning, the work continued.

On August 27, 1907 the warning bells finally went off when the inspection team headed by Norman McLure, noted that, over the weekend, the girders had shifted a “couple of inches” and were more obviously bent. The engineers on site decided to send McLure to New York to consult directly with Cooper. B. A. Yenser, a senior engineer on site for Phoenix, agreed that the problem was serious enough to warrant the trip. There was a telephone at the construction site, but phoning Cooper was deemed not wise because the phone was on a party line and the wrong ears might be listening in. And they certainly did not want to alarm any one.

The next morning, with the engineering team off to New York, Yenser took it upon himself to continue work. When asked why he restarted the work considering the condition of the girders, he stated that he “had a dream”. In the dream he was told that the girder problem was not serious. The team had not yet heard from Cooper but the other senior engineers on site, for some reason, agreed with Yenser.

At 5:32 PM on the 29th of August, while McLure was making his way back from New York, all hell broke loose at the construction site when the girders trembled with a grinding noise and gave way. The bridge structure plunged over 150 feet taking with it the lives of 75 workers.

One of the results of this disaster, outside of Theodore Cooper never designing so much as a catwalk again, was the creation of professional engineering organizations, which require both standards of excellency and ethics in order to join.

Another legacy is that of the iron ring. This symbol is “a reminder to the engineer and others of the engineer’s obligation to live by a high standard of professional conduct.” You can only get it through The Corporation of the Seven Wardens and the various “Kipling Camps” involved with accredited Canadian engineering schools.

Rudyard Kipling was asked to develop a ceremony in which an obligation is made by the prosective engineer to act in an ethical and competent conduct, known today as “The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer.” Alas, as only those who possess the iron ring are allowed to observe this practise, I cannot divulge the intricate mechanisms which permeate the ritual. I can only say that it involves black masks, wooden paddles, and an ingenious probing device known as “The Juggernator.”

The ring itself had been purportedly made from the same iron which made up the girders in the Qubec bridge collapse, though I believe that’s just an old wives’ tale designed to scare anglophone construction companies from purchasing quebecois ferrum. Today, it is a rough-hewn stainless steel, cut like the unpolished mind of the young engineer. Once one retires from being an engineer, he or she is expected to give the ring back to the camp, though this is not a requirement.

Which comes to me, as someone who does not practise engineering but who nonetheless holds an accredited degree in geophysical engineering. I wear mine with pride and humility both, and have no intentions of giving it up any time soon, precisely because I still recall the obligation I took when I received it, just as I acknowledge the disaster which preceded it, a hundred years ago.

It’s about time

The camera sure adds on a few years to my emaciated face. And since when did I pick up the bass?

Oh well. No time for unimportant questions. I gotta buy five copies for my mutha!

Alberta gets jump on Saskatchewan. Again.

Alberta wises up:

Energy Alberta Corp. said late Monday it has formally requested permission from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to construct a pair of twin-unit Candu reactors about 500 kilometres northwest of Edmonton.

“Building a nuclear power facility is a long and rigorous process. This is the beginning of a public and regulatory process that will include environmental, health and safety assessments,” said Wayne Henuset, Energy Alberta’s president and co-chairman, who termed the application a “historic moment” for the province’s nuclear power industry.

“We are proud to be pioneers in bringing the benefits of clean, safe, reliable nuclear power to Alberta.”

Nuclear power is a clean and efficient energy source which will be used to extract and refine Alberta’s bitumen long after the natural gas stocks become too expensive and rare in this province (which will still be some time after my own grandkids have shuffled off their respective mortal coils).

If I were the premier of Saskatchewan, I’d green-light a nuclear power generating facility at La Loche, located a couple hundred klicks east of Fort Mac, which would sell electricty to the tar sands operations and provide jobs for the locals. Unfortunately for Saskies everywhere, the current administration is too focused on their prospective new career of shepherding to do anything constructive with their time.

Only martial law will get us out of this war

When I first saw this, I thought the fine folks at the Onion had outdone themselves:

General Pace – you have the power to fulfill your responsibility to protect the troops under your command. Indeed you have an obligation to do so.

You can relieve the President of his command.

Not of his Presidency. But of his military role as Commander-In-Chief.

You simply invoke the Uniform Code Of Military Justice.

Alas, the truth is, as it often tends to be, much more bizarre: a left-wing publication openly advocating for overturning the constitution by asking for the military leadership to assume supreme authority over itself.

Then again, with the ever-growing melding of the extreme fringes of political discourse, this development was inevitable. Tim Blair must be proud.

Just asking

Has anyone ever stopped to ask how C Montgomery Burns—”America’s richest man” at the onset of the Marshall Plan, worth $16.8 billion, according to Forbes—became that way …. by owning a single nuclear facility which provides power solely for the town of Springfield?

Self-Assessment #5

I did a Jung Typology test. Again.

Your Type is INFP

Strength of the preferences %

Introverted 22
Intuitive 50
Feeling 12
Perceiving 56

Not very strong, I might add. The last time I did this test, I scored and INFJ, where the ‘J’ stands for ‘Judging’, but that was borderline too.

The Keirsey Temperment Indicator for INFP is as such:

The Portrait of a Healer Idealist

Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and investigative and attentive in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.

Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand Healers, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The Healer is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King’s Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.

Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, Healers come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the Healers. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, Healers can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Healers are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when Healers believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the Healer, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

Joe Butt’s description of an INFP is here. (The INFJ is found here.)

Career choices include Counseling, Religious Education, Education, Humanities, Musician, Literature/Writer, Archaeology, and Psychology/Physchotherapy. INFJs include these, plus Law, Social Work, Librarian, Early Childhood Education, Design and Science.

Bo-o-oring!

But it sounds right.

Refusing to Choosing — Self-Assessment #4

The Summer of Bumf continues unabated, though a few days had to be set aside due to work commitments. Those commitments have since been committed, and my other commitment can now commence.

Seeking new insights, I ventured into cyberspace yesterday for some more web-based tools with which I could attempt in front of you, dear reader. One source of valuable info which always pops up among my searches is What Color is Your Parachute?, the seminal resource for career searchers and lost individuals. First written by Dick Bolles, he of JobHuntersBible.com fame, in 1970, Parachute is the best-selling job hunting reference of all time, and I know some of you have even utilized it yourselves to varying degrees of success.

So I hit up McNally Robinson in search of this illustrious tome but was thwarted by its unavailability; instead, I discovered something much more intriguing—Refuse to Choose! by Barbara Sher.

Here’s an excerpt:

“I think I shoud find a new career,” said Ralph, an unhappy engineer who came to see me. He wanted to know if he was in the wrong field and admitted that engineering had never thrilled him.

“What else have you considered?” I asked.

“Well, maybe I could go into architecture. But that takes a lot of training and there are so many other things I might like just as well. How do you choose?”

“Maybe you don’t have to choose,” I said, reay (as I am with all Scanners) to help him see that he could, and should, do it all.

“That’s just it: I don’t choose,” he said. “I don’t do anything at all.” Ralph never got past daydreaming about things that interested him. He never too one step toward any dream, because to him that meant giving up every other dream. “If I pick architecture, I can’t be a graphic artist. If I pick either of them, I can’t be a lighting designer or a writer or an inventor.”

Is this beginning to sound familiar? Have you ever felt stuck because the world is so full of fascinating options that choosing one—even something you wanted with all your heart—would only make you feel deprived?

As I said earlier, that’s like starving in the candy store. But lots of Scanners do the same thing.

Yes, this does sound familiar. Very much so. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything which speaks so much to me as the above reference.

Sher uses the word “Scanner” to describe people who scan the horizon for many interests. (Unfortunately, it has absolutely nothing to do with the Philip K Dick novel.) Often they are people who have a multitude of abilities and inclinations, usually intelligent but often confused or frustrated at the lack of a single career path which might jump out at them. She says that “the best advice you’ve been given has probably been, ‘you can do anything. Just choose one of your talents and get started,’” and that this “was also the worst advice.”

Is this the source of my problems? I have already stated that I have a multitude of interests and I have always had trouble picking a job. Dreams aren’t the problem; the sheer amount and variety of them are a big problem. I have to find a way to manage all my interests and refine them to a point where they are manageable. This book offers some ideas to do just this.

The merits of Refuse to Choose! are yet to be seen; however, unlike all other reference materials I’ve come across, this is the first time I’ve recognized features which speak directly to me. I have a new goal every week and I can’t stop thinking of new things to do and be. Moreover, I’ve never felt like I’ve fit in. Not in my hometown, not in engineering, not here in Calgary. The only time I’ve felt at home was in university, and then I was surrounded by people involved with all majors and activities. Outside of that, being shoehorned into a demographic, profession, or personality type has been an anathema to me.

Maybe Sher is right: maybe I can just try a little bit of everything.

Hmmm …. I’m going to read this a bit further and get back to you’s.