well, they predicted a ridiculously cold winter this year and got it right. the mainstream forecasts were in the same neighbourhood, but not as extreme. for example, they predicted it would be cold in the upper midwest but warm in the southern midwest (it has been cold in both places) and cold in ontario but warm on the coast (it has been cold in both places).

meaning that it probably comes down to a variable or two and that, for whatever reason, the almanac was able to predict that the arctic air masses would overpower the probably maritime factors that the mainstream forecasts thought would overpower the arctic air masses.

it would be really nice to actually see how they came to that conclusion, but they won't publish.

i mean, it's easy to write it off as pseudo-science, but the truth is that we can't analyze the method because it's not public. sure, that obviously justifies some healthy skepticism. but it seems foolish to write something off without even knowing what it is.

http://www.ibtimes.com/farmers-almanac-winter-2014-forecast-draws-skepticism-weathermen-1401939

the last question is sort of silly, though. it's widely acknowledged that sunspots and planetary position have an effect. the problem is that the argument often comes up in the context of people arguing against anthropogenic climate change - and the overwhelming evidence that sunspot activity isn't even correlated with the increases in temperatures we've seen. but denying a link between climate change and sunspots doesn't negate the sun's effect on the earth's weather (weather, here, being contrasted with climate). we can connect all kinds of weather phenomena to sunspots. and with positioning, this is a real thing that's widely accepted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles

but if they won't publish, there's no way to scrutinize what they're doing. from where you or i are standing, it's as good as magic. but if we knew what they were doing, we might be able to pull something of value out of it.

it's been widely published in wonky sources (and less wonky sources) that sunspot activity recently slowed down to almost nothing, leading up to a magnetic pole reversal that finally happened (after a longer than expected wait) a few days ago. even though the source of the cold is arctic air moving south, you don't have to take an obscure, gw-denying position to acknowledge that that might have had an effect on the cold winter we've had.

it would just be nice to see their calculations opened up so that that could be examined.

the recent magnetic reversal dismisses the fears in the article, but it gets to the point i'm making:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24512-solar-activity-heads-for-lowest-low-in-four-centuries.html

right. but it could give us a nasty winter or two.

then again, the current "nasty winter" would have been normal 30 years ago.
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/11/solar-activity-and-the-so-called-%E2%80%9Clittle-ice-age%E2%80%9D/

btw, an interesting question that i've explored a little on this page going way back is whether there may be a way to connect volcanic activity to "space weather". i'm mostly thinking in terms of gravity. there's a really intuitive example with tides being caused by the moon. could all the gravity floating around us, from the sun and jupiter and whatever else, have an effect on the way continents interact, thereby affecting volcanic activity? if so, there's not a contradiction in the two ideas.

i just caught a centipede eating the hair in my sink.

i suppose hair has protein. kinda desperate, though.

re: roach situation

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>  
To: the initial landlord

actually, i got one right away. it's in a plastic baggie - i guess i can bring this upstairs...?

i'm no entomologist, but it sure looks like a roach to me. again, it seems to have come out of the wall looking for water; i caught it near the shower. also, given the pattern i've seen, i suspect it may be the same one i saw a few days ago and let get away into the crack. i really don't think there's an infestation in the unit, but rather a high number near by. when one gets in, it runs around for a few days until i catch it and then i don't see another for weeks....

j

re: roach situation

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>  
To: the initial landlord

they're easy to kill by hitting them with a kleenex box, they don't seem to react to humans at all until they're attacked, but it may be a while before i see another one. as mentioned, they seem to be in the walls rather than in the unit. they never stray far from the hole they came from and try to go back in the hole if you don't get them the first time. when i blocked them off in the bedroom, they went away for months. now that i've blocked the dead radiator, i haven't seen another. i'm not sure what other entry points might exist, but i'll keep an eye out.

j

re: roach situation

From: the initial landlord
To: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Happy Holiday, we have never had roaches but have had occasionally had bugs that are similar. They had appeared briefly from time to time and had originated from the storm sewer drain . I will contact my brother and he can use some product we might still have from a few years ago when we had a few bugs appear. Please try to capture one of the them so we can make a determination of what the bug is.

there's a young lady in the neighbourhood that's been bumping into me repeatedly and coming up with excuses to try and start a conversation with me. nervous hands, giggly voice. obvious; annoying, really. unfortunately, anybody that is displaying any interest in any type of interaction that is less than completely random and spontaneous is going to instantly be put in my perpetual ignore filter. see, anybody that is going out of their way to try and get to know me better is making a gigantic mistake, the proportions of which they really have no grasp of. it demonstrates bad judgment. to begin with, my first assumption is cia, and that assumption isn't going to recede quickly. but, i'm ultimately not willing to waste my time when the conclusion is predetermined. it's better if others get the point quickly rather than waste their own time. that's just time i could have spent by myself, doing something i'm more interested in.

it got me thinking, though, as i was turning the corner a block early to avoid crossing paths. it's actually been almost 8 years, now, since i last had any kind of sexual activity. that's probably longer than most people in convents and monasteries (i don't really think most of them take those oaths all that seriously). practically speaking, i think i've revirginized myself.

i don't really think about it, or even really care. my level of cynicism about sex is probably clinical. like, in need of deep psychiatry - or so people would claim. whatever. the reality is probably that i'm absolutely right and the rest of the world is totally naive. i think i'm more likely to convince a shrink than the other way around. it's just a question of coming to terms with the futility of existence. maybe i'm being a little bit buddhist again; again, whatever.

but eight years is really impressive, considering it's just out of absolute disinterest rather than anything ideological or philosophical. i see no reason to think i won't go another eight...

it's nice to realize that my bedroom is perfectly positioned to take maximum advantage of the winter's mid-afternoon sunlight. the last few places i've occupied have been less ideal, to say the least.

it's also sort of neat to realize this right after the solstice.

place must have been built by druids...

jessica amber murray
....and, now, to attempt to have a few drinks without smoking any cigarettes. considering the temperature outside (along with my absolute aversion to indoor smoking), i think i'm likely to do well. we'll see.

regarding the smoking thing...

the packs have been almost entirely cut out. i've bought probably around ten packs, total, since the beginning of september. what i've been doing instead is falling back to these single cigars that can be picked up at the corner store for around $1 whenever i'm about to crack. it's a little more costly on the face of it, but it's a good shot of nicotine so it works for a while. one of the problems quitters will run into is that when they crack once they want another one almost right away; the cigars seem to mitigate that. more importantly, it has broken me of a lot of routines, like smoking after meals. to me, that's the harder part. i know nicotine is a physical addiction (meaning that coming off of it will produce physical effects, like drowsiness) but i don't really feel hooked on that level. it's more about breaking routine...

...and not drinking. i've always been a social drinker, so no people has meant no drinking. i mean, i spend most of my time reading, and i'd rather be sober for that. i prefer marijuana as a creative aid. what i'm about to do is uncharacteristic.

so, i can't claim i'm nicotine-free. but i *have* broken the routine, to the point where i can honestly state that i'm not a habitual smoker anymore.

which is all i really wanted to accomplish in the first place. i don't mind being a social smoker that specifically smokes around alcohol and marijuana. what i no longer wanted to be was a solo smoker. on that point, mission accomplished.

(meaning i'm not going to get too mad at myself if i buy a pack on christmas, just like i didn't get too mad when i bought a pack a few weeks ago when it was over 10 degrees, just as an excuse to hang out outside for the day. stuff like that is enjoying the drug, not being a slave to it.) 

mom 
Wow! That's Great!...Wish, I could have that much self-control!

jessica amber murray
i don't think it's a question of self-control so much as it's a question of doing what one wants. i kind of strongly believe that smokers smoke because they want to, not because they're zombies. the physical withdrawals are coercive, no doubt, but it comes down to wanting or not wanting to quit.

mom 
Addiction Stinks!....And in the end it WILL TAKE CONTROL!.....DENIAL is an addicts BEST FRIEND.

jessica amber murray
well, sure. but the semantics break down when you speak of control. what i'm really doing is giving myself permission to indulge, not controlling myself from indulging.

i guess i have a level of broad consistency in my concept of "self-control" that goes into a lot of areas and that my perspective regarding drugs is more of a consequence of how i see things more broadly. consider governments and this idea that their laws dissuade anti-social behaviour, the idea that laws act as disincentives to control people's desires. this is an idea that is, i think, very wrong. sure, on the one hand, you have the logic of poverty that often triumphs over the laws of social order. circumstances where property crimes exist are often circumstances where it's logical for an impoverished person to steal something or otherwise break property laws. governments can produce laws to catch people when they do this, but the laws don't actually succeed in preventing property crime. they merely succeed in criminalizing poverty. rather, eliminating that sort of crime requires a lot of social work to both eliminate the conditions that lead to it as logical and to create a populace that sees it as morally wrong. once you get to that ideal point, preventing crime is less of a process of people controlling themselves from committing crimes and more of a process of people choosing not to behave in a way that is anti-social. that's the ideal.

the way we treat addiction is sort of a cop-out. i mean, i'm not denying that addicts need to admit their addictions. i agree that acknowledgement is the first step. but actually working through it is a process of transcending the desire, not repressing it.

i think it's possible to use drugs without abusing them.

with alcoholism (and for random readers, that's not something i feel i have a problem with), the way to get beyond it is not to have the "self-control" to avoid it but to develop a desire to be sober.

(and i think i'm being a little bit buddhist, but it's something i connect to accidentally and intuitively rather than consciously)

in a moral sense, i find buddhism more rational than western religion. in the west, we've fallen into a sort of false dichotomy between "master morality" and "slave morality". the irony is that the dude that developed that false dichotomy is also the dude that transferred a lot of eastern ideas into the western sphere. he completely missed the obvious synthesis that was sitting right in front of him.

you need to be careful studying buddhism in the west, though, because most of the literature is misinterpreted hippie nonsense. there's a danger of turning into a new age weirdo.

for example, avoid anything that tries to connect buddhism with science.

i kind of like the idea that "only lost people require religion". which is to say that walking into a church or a temple or a synagogue isn't likely to find you people that understand how to behave morally on an intuitive level, but people that are struggling with it. people that "get it" find the whole thing boring and trivial.

not to put myself above it or anything. not declaring myself perfect. but there's a lot of truth to it. and if one can separate the social help from the control and brainwashing [which is difficult, especially for people in fragile states], i'll accept it could have some value.

what i'd rather see, though, is a resurgence of secular social institutions that strip out the brainwashing. i think there's a really open space here for socialist thinkers to walk into and am not really sure why they haven't, given that it connects quite well to the idea that "the social revolution must come first".

roach situation

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: the initial landlord

hi.

i just want to say things are going well here. and merry christmas.

there's actually not what i'd call a "roach problem" in the unit itself. i've seen a few here and there, exclusively where there are cracks in the wall. that is to say that i don't think there are roaches in the unit, but it is certainly the case that sometimes roaches wander into the unit from elsewhere in the building. i saw one the other day near the dead heater in the kitchen, and hadn't seen one before that since about october - when i had seen a few near the hole for the pipe in the closet. when i covered up the pipe, they went away. so, i've filled the cracks around the dead heater up with a pile of old hole-ridden socks i had hanging around for rags and expect that will keep them out of there. it seemed like the roach i saw in the kitchen was actually looking for water, not food. it was attracted to the sink. i'm very careful to ensure all the food in the unit is in the fridge - even like bread and stuff.

i do, however, feel a responsibility to point out that there are roaches in the building. my perspective regarding that is that there are bugs everywhere; i'm content to simply patch up holes when i see them and keep them out that way. but, as a tenant, i think i have a responsibility to inform you that they do seem to have a nest in the building somewhere.

j

i just clued in that the distance one lives from their timezone split can have a huge difference on the way the sun is experienced. i suppose that this is obvious, but i never realized it before.

the sun wasn't up until almost 8:00 today. sure, it's the shortest day of the year, but that's still pushing it. it wasn't up until around 8:00 before they turned the clocks back, too. in ottawa, the sun is never much later than 7:30. most confusing to me was that i'm comfortable in the knowledge that windsor is south of ottawa, meaning it's closer to the equator, meaning i would think it should be a few seconds (maybe a minute or two) *earlier*, not apparently a half hour later. it seemed late in the fall, too. i'm used to the sun being up before 7:00 most of the year, and it really wasn't. so, what, precisely, is the fuck?

well, it's pretty obvious if you look at the map. it's not that the sunrise is later here, it's that synchronizing clocks across timezones is something that sort of doesn't actually make sense. here's where it gets weird, and we're moving from east to west across the eastern time-zone here, within a relatively small latitude change:

boston - 7:11
nyc - 7:17
montreal - 7:32
ottawa - 7:40
toronto - 7:48
detroit - 7:59
indianapolis - 8:03

then...

chicago - 7:15

right. time zone shift.

as is now obvious, it's the move east-west that makes the difference. humans may possibly exist at infinitely many points within each time zone, producing a different experience of the sun in each that varies by as much as an hour on the edges. the difference between living in detroit and living in chicago could be dramatic for some people. what i've done is move a half hour within the zone, and it's produced noticeable effects.

there's a benefit, though, if you're the type that is inclined that way, especially in the summer:

sunset in ottawa today - 4:23
sunset in windsor today - 5:03

so, the thing to adjust to is the sun coming up a half hour later and setting a half hour later.

mom
i was wondering why the sun wasn't coming up when we drove in.

jessica amber murray
well, it was freaking you out. i just thought it was cloudy. it wasn't until around october that i realized something wasn't right.

mom
the summer days were always a lot longer in prince rupert, so i thought the days got longer when you moved north and shorter as you get closer to the equator. so, shouldn't the days in windsor be shorter?

jessica amber murray
that's a big latitude difference, though. almost 10 degrees. and the shift isn't linear - it changes faster as you move further north. so, you'd expect to notice a measurable change with longer days in the summer and shorter days in the winter. ottawa to windsor is only 3 degrees. i mean, i'm sure you could measure it down to a few minutes, but it couldn't really be that noticeable.

actually, sunrise in binghampton, new york was about 11 minutes earlier than sunrise in ottawa, today. so that's the straight comparison, north-south. at the solstice.

really, the longitude thing is totally obvious when you think about it. of course the sun does rise later over windsor than over ottawa if measured from outer space (my language up there was a bit weird). i'm just a half hour further away from the earth coming out of darkness. the thing is we tend to expect that time zones work that kind of shit out and don't think about the changes that exist when moving across the same time zone.

also, the fact that we were moving west overnight might have exaggerated the effect. we got to experience the earlier sunset in ottawa, then the later sunrise on the way into windsor.

something i've learned though is that if you like an early sunset (and i'm often up all night, and do like to watch the sun rise) then you want to be on the easternmost edge of your timezone. relative to your clock, the sun rises earlier in chicago than in detroit (although it of course passes over detroit first). somewhere like the gaspe peninsula would be perfect for those that like early sunrises..

in terms of actual fruit content, pineapples are highly deceptive.

we need a stray cat cull. the idea that we can just continue to allow these vermin to breed out of control in our cities is not looking at the bigger picture and the kind of problems they're going to cause.

gawker, as usual, are being morons; this woman had every right to chase the cat (who was probably hanging around looking for food and/or trying to sneak in) away from her place.

it may seem unusual, but if you're shocked then what you need to realize is that that cat may be twenty or more generations removed from domestication. nor were they ever fully domesticated in the first place. this is just the beginning; they're going to get more and more aggressive. i'm just across the river. i can state clearly that the alley cats i've tried to interact with (including several around my place) are an entirely different species of animal. they have no interest in human affection. they run when you try and touch them - more like a squirrel would than like a house cat would. which means they're just another rodent, right? who cares? except that they're territorial, and don't understand or care that humans built all this stuff. they'll try and block your path home, under the perception that you're invading their territory. and, i have to admit i've felt stalked. that's the next step in their instincts reasserting themselves.

we can't just let them evolve back into dangerous wild animals in our urban core because we're too pussy (pun intended) to deal with them.

http://gawker.com/woman-learns-invaluable-lesson-about-not-picking-fights-1484881340

headphones have arrived at the post-office. back in business tomorrow.

RE: Yes, All new homeowners can pick up their first recycling Red & Blue Boxes free at the Environmental Services Centre

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>
To: city.windsor.on.ca

i picked some up at home hardware the other day....

thanks anyways.

j

Yes, All new homeowners can pick up their first recycling Red & Blue Boxes free at the Environmental Services Centre

From: the city of windsor
To: "death.to.koalas@gmail.com" <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>

Hi Jessica.

I just wanted to let you know that you can come down to pick up your new boxes.  We are located at 3540 North Service Road East (corner of EC Row & Central Ave.)

We are open from 8:00 am to 4:00pm.  I will just have you write down your name and address and then you can collect your boxes.

Thanks,
Public Works / Environmental Services

so, i just watched a three hour mit food security symposium and what i learned is that, because meat consumption is correlated with wealth, the best way to promote the shift to vegetarianism is to promote policies that decrease total wealth.

they weren't even asking the right questions. so of course they didn't have any useful answers.

they danced around the climate change issue, but the closest thing to a straight answer i could pull out what was "we find that the greater uncertainty makes it difficult to make predictions, and consequently to plan".

it's fair on some level. but it's not encouraging.

what they're all more concerned about is malthus...

first, i should point out the sarcasm if it's not obvious. to them, the issue is trying to find a way to produce enough livestock to feed 8 billion people. the idea of not producing livestock seems to be outside of the ideas being contemplated.

but, malthus. he thought we'd all starve to death. a simple mathematical model.

it turned out he was wrong, but he was wrong for a specific reason: as quickly as population has risen, and it has risen quickly, technology has simply moved ahead faster: mechanization, refrigeration, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides...

that doesn't mean his model was wrong, it just means he didn't realize how useful oil would be.

of course, there's a cost.

but these guys get that. and now they have the blind faith that malthus was screaming at us all to avoid. technology has been elevated to this sort of religion, defined by some kind of creed of moore's law.

well, i'm willing to listen. skeptical. i mean, it has to burst at some point. tomatoes are finite.

infinite tomato.

anyways, what's your fancy technology that's going to beat the math this time? i'm waiting...

it's....

africa.

no, for real.

africa.

well, ok. africa is huge. makes sense on some level. that's math you have to do with a pen and a paper, not guess in your head - not due to computational complexity, but because the precision of the calculation is important. there is probably lots of arable land in africa, which is a really unfathomably big place. it just might work...

but, you're going to work in the effects of desertification, right?

*crickets*

you're going to make sure there's carbon offsetting from cutting down all those trees, right?

*crickets*

here, in the heart of the empire? we'll be the last to starve.

i'm going to retreat back to my previous suggestion of terraforming mars into a natural strawberryological cycle.

we could promote it by getting strawberry shortcake to do a rendition of "strawberry rain".

no cryptoracism.

"the red planet". wouldn't even create galactic chromopollution.

melted nutella, bananas + strawberry jam

gorgeous day. took advantage of it by finally taking the hour long trek out to get a blue bin and a red bin. i wasn't expecting them to be so big (well, i could have grabbed tiny ones, but that seemed silly - no middle or 'normal' size was the weirdness). so i looked pretty odd hauling these two giant bins around for 5 km. not sure if the honks were sarcastic or in solidarity...

it was a nice walk, though. and it'll be nice to get these four month old juice cartons out of here.

and now i'm kinda sleepy. so i think i'll get back to deconstructing this so-called history of the norman invasions of italy as a bunch of mythical nonsense.

you got all these people trying to convince the world that their mythology is history. i'm more interested in convincing the world that history is mostly mythology.

"All new homeowners can pick up their first recycling Red and Blue Boxes free at the Environment Services Centre"

From: Jessica Murray <death.to.koalas@gmail.com>   
To: pubwork@city.windsor.on.ca

hi.

i'm just wondering how stringent they are about "home owner". i'm living in a rental unit that isn't currently recycling. can i pick up a blue and red box myself or do i need to convince my landlord to do it?

j

it's always so hard to tell when bros yelling at each other are being serious or not. you've gotta give it three or four back-and-forths of "come here, bitch", "i'm over here, bitch", "you wanna fight, bitch?", etc before the volume either goes up or down enough to figure it out and, consequently, you know whether to shake your head at their misogynistic attempts to verbally jostle each other into a joking submission or get out of the way while they pointlessly harm each other for entirely trivial reasons.

silly bros.