Anti-Customer Behaviour

Why do companies continue to engage in anti-customer behaviour? We’ve all experienced it; the telemarketer that calls you every day; restaurants that don’t accept some credit cards; airport security that doesn’t have a sense of humour; companies that give you loyalty points and then take them away if you don't use them.

How did these behaviours come to be allowed or even considered normal? I don’t do business with such places. I vote with my wallet and feet. I go elsewhere. Airlines and banks have been among the worst offenders in anti-customer behaviour for decades. Haven’t they heard that the customer is always right?

No so long ago, banks were grateful to have our money deposited with them. They gave us free services to entice us to keep our money there. They made their profit by investing it and lending it at a higher interest rate than they paid their depositors. Now, they seem to think it their divine right to nickel and dime their customers for every service. Why do people put up with this? The banks don’t need the pittance they get from doing this. It contributes less than 10% to their profit margin. They make $1B+ profits year after year! On top of that, the point spread between what they pay us on a deposit and what they charge on a loan has increased. How much do they need to take from their customers before we sit up and say, “Enough!”? Don’t even get me started on credit card companies. Why do they think that 20% annual interest rates are acceptable? They’re even higher when compounded monthly or daily.

Airlines have kept the same seat size since the 50’s. The people occupying those seats have increased in size considerably but airlines have done nothing to accommodate this. Consequently, an airplane is absolutely the most uncomfortable way to travel. Airports are usually located in inconvenient places, have expensive parking, long queues, lose luggage and don’t care if they cause you to miss a flight on another airline due to the inability to cope with weather or other problems. Customers have no rights or, certainly, not enough rights.

What kind of business treats it’s customers with such disrespect? What kinds of customers accept such treatment? Doesn’t anyone have any self-respect? People used to protest such bad behaviour. Now, those who protest are arrested and no one seems to care. Witness the reporter in Iraq who threw a shoe at George Bush; arrested for expressing his anger at Bush’s idiocy and arrogance. He had a right to do that in his cultural context but, no, he had to be “controlled”. When will the Bozo’s in power understand that that’s not the role of a democratic government? It’s a kind of anti-customer behaviour where the customers are a country’s citizens and the business is the government.

I’ve never understood why saying the word “bomb” in an innocent context at the airport causes so much concern. It’s not like they are ever actually going to see one. It’s most certainly not a justifiable limitation on freedom of speech, either. It’s a naïve, Draconian, knee-jerk, over-reaction typical of people who just don’t get that they aren’t doing anyone any good with that sort of behaviour. If terrorists, who have no interest in Canada anyway, can change our society in such insidious ways then they’ve won. They’ve proven that you don’t need to blow up anything to curtail freedom of speech and force an entire industry to become even more anti-customer than they already were.

Anti-customer behaviour is not only rude, unprofessional and annoying, it strikes at the very nature of our society – its freedom and its values. The principle that “the customer is always right” needs to be recognised for the citizen/government as well as the customer/corporation relationship now more than ever.

Why UFO's don't exist

Here are the reasons why I don't believe in UFOs:

(1) While one cannot say what aliens will look like specifically one can say what they will not look like. In particular, they will not look like humans. While the biological processes that produce life are the same, the evolutionary forces are not. Therefore, while one can expect a biological organism composed of cells based on a hydrocarbon protein structure it is not reasonable to expect that the end result of millions of years of evolution in two separate environments would produce sentient beings that closely resemble each other. Chimpanzees are an example of the improbability of such an event even here on Earth. They have 99% of their DNA identical to us but even that 1% difference results in an appearance so dramatically different as to be obviously non-human. Imagine the difference that a completely separate evolutionary process would create!

Furthermore, the gravitational field of the alien's world would have to be similar to that of Earth to produce beings of a scale similar to our own and a cellular structure leading to similar eyes, hands, bipedal motion, organ configuration and so on. The evolution of such a being would require billions of years in a stable, oceanic environment approximately the size of Earth orbiting a stable sun at a distance that would produce a climate similar to ours allowing liquid water to exist, an atmosphere which is oxygen rich allowing chemical reactions to occur, a mineral content which is non-toxic, etc. The probability that such a planet exists within even 1000 light years of Earth is extremely small considering that no radio signals have been found within the last 20 years of searching and most nearby (<100 lyr) stars have been found to be devoid of such planets.

(2) The distance travelled from one inhabited star to another is too great to be performed by living beings. It requires tremendous time and fuel supplies, a sustainable food source, a sufficient population to survive across generations, repair materials and so on. If we examine these one by one, the difference between observed UFOs and what simple Physics dictates is apparent. Firstly, there are no Earth-like planets within 100 light-years of us. In fact, there are very few stars within 100 light-years of Earth. This means that any aliens would have to come from much greater distances. To travel even a few light years would take several years at speeds near the speed of light (say 30%-50%). In order to achieve these speeds, as well as provide an artificial gravity, a ship would have to accelerate at 1 G for half the trip then decelerate for the next half. This pre-supposes that the aliens know exactly where they are going and travel directly here without interruption that, in itself, is not a particularly probable circumstance but more importantly it requires an enormous amount of fuel. The only fuel capable of providing such power as would be needed to perform this task would be anti-matter. For a 100 light year trip this would amount to about 50 lbs of anti-matter - presuming they would wish to return home. This might not seem like a great deal of material except for the small detail that there isn't any free anti-matter available in the Universe. It must all be manufactured. Currently, the largest cyclotron on Earth has the capability to produce about a millionth of a gram a year but let's pretend that by some technological miracle anti-matter can be produced easily.

The next problem is to contain it; that can be done only magnetically. For 50 lbs of anti-matter, an iron magnet the size of several large office buildings would be required. If, again, by some miracle of technology the problem of building a powerful enough magnet could be overcome the magnetic field it produced would still be so intense as to require being heavily shielded and kept far away from the mother ship to avoid affecting other instrumentation or biological life. This, of course, does not fit the descriptions provided of alien craft.
(3) The accelerations reported for some UFOs is so great as to prevent sentient life from existing. The maximum acceleration in which any life form that evolved in a gravitational field approximating the strength of Earth's can survive is about 10 G's. This would mean a 100 lb alien would weigh 1/2 ton! Any living being that was subjected to repeated accelerations of 10 G's, even for short periods, would die of internal injuries quite quickly even if they could remain conscious and in control of their craft. The craft itself would not be able to withstand much such punishment as metal fatigue would quickly become a problem. It's also difficult to see the necessity of aliens subjecting themselves to such torture unless it was a matter of life and death yet these accelerations are routinely reported.

(4) The normal saucer-shaped depictions of UFOs, together with the cigar shaped ones are aerodynamically unstable and unsuitable for flight in an atmosphere without fins of some sort. These shapes are also unnecessary in the vacuum of space. No intelligent beings with any knowledge of geometry and aerodynamics would design such a shape for a craft intended for use in an atmosphere. Furthermore, in light of the enormous requirements for fuel, food and population that an interstellar ship would have the size is likely to be on the order of a small town. Such a craft would not be able to evade visual detection for long, if at all. This size of craft would not be able to fly in the Earth's atmosphere and is inconsistent with reports of UFO size. Therefore, this mother ship would also have to carry shuttle craft with its own power systems. Since they are so much smaller they would need to be shaped for atmospheric flying even with anti-matter powered engines otherwise they would simply burn up or blow apart due to friction and turbulence.

(5) The human mind is capable of fooling itself very easily because perception is distorted by our experience. When a human encounters a phenomenon that is outside his experience his mind will attempt to understand it in terms of known ideas. This is the basis for optical illusions, aliens, gods, ghosts or other supernatural concepts. Of course, past civilizations have believed in many gods that control natural phenomena - at least until a scientific explanation was found. Belief in the supernatural is a way of shifting responsibility away from oneself. If something happens, well, then it's God's will - not my fault. Psychics are a means for people to make decisions without actually bearing the responsibility for the results. These "beliefs" are part of the human psyche - a way of processing information.

Identification of unusual natural phenomena as UFOs is a problem of perception. If one is willing to believe raw numbers then 10,000 UFO reports should be a good indication that there really is something there. Unfortunately, when project Blue Book investigated these reports it could explain 95% as easily identifiable natural phenomena. This overwhelming rate of identification is a very strong indication that what is really happening is that the UFO reports are unreliable because people are placing an interpretation on events which is the result of ignorance, wishful thinking, gullibility or other unreliable methods. It is well-known by Police that five witnesses to an incident will give five different versions of what happened - none of which will be entirely accurate.

This principle also applies to photographs and tapes of such events that are always of distant, unclear objects. There is not a single clear photograph in existence of anything that can reliably be said to be an alien spacecraft. Furthermore, there is no debris, garbage, footprints, metal fragments or ground markings that have ever been found and identified as alien in origin. The high proportion of hoaxes, whether perpetrated by others or by the mind on itself, is a strong indicator that there is a big difference between reality and perception. If one is willing to accept virtually anything as "evidence" then virtually anything becomes plausible.
It is also worth noting that sightings of actual aliens didn't begin until after the movies and comic books started portraying them. In the beginning most descriptions of aliens varied widely but now that we've had a few decades to get used to the idea they are becoming more consistent with the original movie versions of the 1950's. It's long been well-known that adults who recall past lives are just recalling previous things they've read or seen as a child and the same phenomena is at work with aliens as well. Mass hallucinations are also well known. There is a case in India where 10,000 people swore they could see the Sun dance across the sky. Unfortunately, the other 5 billion of us didn't see that. There has also been a film taken of a roomful of people who believe an inanimate object moved. The film clearly showed the object at rest and the people moving. So much for perception or experience being reliable.

(6) Crop circles are another example of a hoax used to indicate the presence of "aliens". Unfortunately for such believers, there are entire clubs which go about doing this. Each club tries to "answer" another's by producing complex patterns in fields. They have admitted it publicly on numerous occasions.
Another hoax has been the so-called "historical" artefact which purports to show aliens having visited the Earth hundreds of years ago. They have all been positively exposed as fakes or given normal historical interpretations in virtually all cases.

(7) Reports of alien autopsies, abductions or close encounters are usually made using unconventional methods and by individuals of questionable credentials or by television shows with about as much credibility or integrity as "The National Enquirer". Numerous credible experts who examine these reports pronounce repeatedly that they are hoaxes but that's not what gets reported. Only the initial, un-investigated report is what is given because only that is sensational. When the "Oh, is that all it was. Gee, do I look foolish" truth is made public it is no longer "news-worthy".

(8) It is not reasonable to simply "believe" that something is true without proof even if one would like it to be so. It is not reasonable to accept something as "evidence" or "proof" unless it is unambiguous. It is not reasonable to accept "personal experience" as proof because of the unreliable nature of human perception. It is not reasonable to believe in something that contradicts the known laws of Physics. Even if there are some unknown technologies that can overcome any of the obstacles to interstellar travel, the known laws of Physics must still apply. Even if all the contradictions in UFO reports are disregarded, as well as the reliability of human perception, the limit of the speed of light plus the enormous time and resources required to travel the vast interstellar distances which are involved all preclude the possibility of such travel with virtual certainty. Ignorance of the sciences of Physics, Biology, Astronomy, Engineering, Geology and Cosmology and the social studies of Psychology and History together with the intrinsic human qualities of suggestibility, gullibility and psychological need are responsible for all the aliens or UFOs ever "seen".

Travelling First Class

When is a first class ticket not a first class ticket? Apparently, when it’s bought using points. It doesn’t matter if it’s American Express points, Aeroplan points or any other. There seems to be a systematic discrimination against customers who redeem points. A case in point is the EuroStar – the high speed train between London and Paris. I purchased a first class return ticket on this train expecting to have a wonderful experience. I’ve travelled on trains in Europe many times and they’ve always been very interesting trips. One gets to see the scenery and have a comfortable and roomy seat. It’s a much more civilised way to travel than by airplane.

When we arrived at the departure lounge in London, we tried to enter the first class lounge using our “first class” tickets as proof of eligibility but were told that they were the “wrong kind of first class tickets”. “What!” I said in stunned amazement. Imagine that - a first class ticket that isn’t! But that was only the beginning. Upon boarding the “first class” coach on the train, we found that we were stuck in the last seat of the cabin. There was insufficient luggage space since some thoughtful American who had brought about 8 large pieces with her had taken most of the space just before we got there. She also talked loudly on her mobile all the way through France which was also very annoying.

Despite all that, I was still looking forward to an enjoyable trip. To my amazement, though, the seats were as bad as airline seats. They were close together, had insufficient legroom. The aisles were narrow and not conducive to stretching the legs. The food was no better than airline food. There wasn’t a dining car. And worst of all, I didn’t see anything the entire time we were travelling through France. There were whacking great banks on either side of the train that blocked out the view. While it was definitely more convenient than taking a plane, the whole experience left me wondering why I had bothered to travel first class. It just wasn’t worth it.

I mentioned that we had been seated in the very back of the coach in the train. Normally, this wouldn’t bother me except that it seems to be a pattern when one books using points. I’ve made seven trips in “Executive” class on Air Canada in the last few years using points and on every single occasion they’ve put me at the back of the section. This has got to be more than coincidence. Including the EuroStar seats, that’s nine straight times I’ve been at the back of the cabin. It has to be a systemic discrimination.

Of the seven Air Canada trips, only three were worth the extra cost. The other four were no better than travelling economy. The seats wouldn’t move back more than a few inches, they were covered in the same material as the economy seats, there wasn’t a great deal more legroom and one could certainly not lie back, stretch out and get some rest. I’m talking flights of 4 ½ hour here – not short haul. In fact, one of the short haul flights I was on, between Toronto and Ottawa, had the best executive class seating I’ve ever had! Now why do you suppose that is? Could it have anything to do with politicians using the flight? Edmonton doesn’t rate good executive class seating, apparently.

All in all, travelling first class has not been worth the price I've paid for it and the apparent discrimination against those using points, disgusts me.

Multiculturalism

Multiculturalism is an odd word. Why should there be an “ism” about this? Why is our government spending money essentially dividing our country into cultural fragments? Immigrants don’t expect to maintain their culture when they go to another country. They are trying to escape deprivation, was, persecution or just seeking a better life. It takes a lot of courage to leave your country behind and adopt a new one.

Whenever I travel to another country I certainly try to conform to local customs and even learn some of their language. If I moved to another country, would I expect the government to spend taxpayer’s money to support my culture? Of course not! “When in Rome” and all that. If I wished to keep my culture, it would be no big deal to join some expat group or just observe some familiar practices in my own home. One only has to see the array of cultural centres that exist in any city to realise that.

I love going to the Edmonton Heritage festival and sampling other cuisines, listening to music and watching the entertainers. This is a great way to learn about other cultures but I pay for that pleasure. These sorts of things are ways for locals to make money as well as expose their culture. But if it’s not economically viable then it shouldn’t happen.

Why do we have a whole ministry to support cultural pluralism? It seems shocking to think that we are spending millions of dollars supporting an unnecessary bureaucracy that is essentially destroying our culture from within. Culture is a dynamic thing and it doesn’t need any interference from some unnecessary, overpaid public servants to exist, educate, integrate or evolve. I knew some people who emigrated here and told me that they are not keeping their own culture just so they feel more at home here – so they “fit in”. That was their choice but it makes one think that maybe we just don’t need a Ministry of Multiculturalism – whatever that does.

According to the Canadian Multiculturalism Act, one of the reasons that this odd Ministry was brought into existence was "to recognise all Canadians as full and equal participants in Canadian society". This is a fair enough goal but not one that needs an entire Ministry to achieve. The ideal behind this is not to create a melting-pot society but to build a “mosaic” of cultures. Can there be any more fractious or divisive cultural policy? Just look at how the French behave. Tolerance is achievable only through education and integration into a new blend - not by a concerted effort to label us as the Census does. In the 1981 census, 1.2 million people identified themselves as of a specific ethnic origin. In 1996, 10.2 million people identified their ethnic heritages. Part of this was due to an expanded list of ethnic origins but it also shows that people are thinking of themselves in more divisive units now. Why should the Census want to know this? What difference does it make?

Canada has always be a mosaic of cultures but with the elusive “Canadian” identity to bind them together. Now, it seems, we are trying to destroy that identity in favour of a mixture of self-absorbed sub-cultures. We don’t need to celebrate our differences but our similarities. Multiculturalism doesn’t break down discrimination; it promotes it by keeping distinct cultural identities intact. One day, this wilful interference in the natural evolution of our culture will come back to haunt the government by destroying it.

Is religion a satanic invention?

Why do we have religions? They are based on an un-provable, improbable assumption – the existence of one or more supreme beings that look like us. What a strange invention. We use gods to explain things, assign blame and soothe our worries – why bad things happen, the origin of life, what can we do to have a better year next year?

These are all things that we instinctively need to explain. Our brains are geared to look for explanations and to recognise patterns. That’s why we have stereotypes and why we can read words that are jumbled up. Religions have developed as ways to help us try to explain the unknown by providing stories, rituals and meanings to the random fluctuations of the world in which we live. The belief in a god has been waning over the last few centuries as our level of knowledge and education has increased. It used to be heresy for one not to believe in a god or the church. Now, something like 25% of people in Western civilisation claim not to be religious or believe in a god. We no longer need the naïve explanations of religions.

Unfortunately, religions have exerted a lot of influence over the past 2000 years – and probably longer. They have been excuses for more and bloodier wars than anything else on the planet. Today, we have the holy war. Now there’s like an oxymoron. How can one believe in the philosophies of today’s religions and still murder people of other faiths? How can a church institute witch hunts, inquisitions, crusades and holy wars and call themselves good? It seems to me that religions are actually a satanic invention because they foster intolerance, hatred and violence. It is precisely their hypocrisy that makes fundamentalist religious leaders such good representatives of evil.

Maybe the communists got it right when they proclaimed that religion was the opiate of the people. It certainly makes them follow their leaders. One just has to look at what happened in Jonestown or at today’s suicide bombers or World War II’s kamikaze pilots to understand the inherent evil in these leaders and their beliefs. Those bastards are ready to let you die for their cause.

Then there are more recent atrocities like residential schools, sexual molestation, hearing God tell one to kill, banning homosexuality and gay marriage, trying to prevent evolution from being taught, banning birth control, even telling people what clothes to wear – the list of horrific acts is practically endless. Of course, churches have some good qualities, too. One only has to watch “the Bishops WIfe” to see that there are some entertaining movies about it. Taking all the good and bad things about religions into consideration, however, if religion was a drug, it would be banned from the market as being too dangerous.

I don’t really care if someone wants to believe in some supernatural cosmic muffin but it should be a personal belief not an organisation and not imposed on others. It’s appalling that we are subjected to overt religious symbols in the RCMP, a national institution, and that women be forced to cover themselves completely in Islamic countries. These are not necessary for sustaining a religious belief. They are cultural beliefs. If you want to wear a head scarf then, by all means, do so but do it because you want to not because anyone tells you to. If you join a group that has a uniform then you should understand that you have to wear the uniform. Get over it. When in Rome do as the Roman’s do. Keep your religious symbols in your home, in your temples or under your clothes if you wish and don’t impose them on others.

Monogamy and Plural Marriage

I’ve always wondered why monogamy is portrayed as being so absolutely crucial for a marriage. You see, we as a species are not naturally monogamous. For example, it has long been known that there is a “7 year itch” in marriages. When we pair-bond, it seems that it is strong for about 5 or 6 years and then begins to wane. This is classically explained as an adaptation needed to have a child and raise him until he is old enough to take care of himself. After that, the procreation imperative kicks in again and we start looking around at the next person. This allows us to spread our genes around and perhaps be more successful in that respect.

Studies of blood antigens in humans and primates also support the fact that we are not particularly monogamous. Species that are promiscuous have a lot of antigens and species that are monogamous have relatively few. Humans fall in the middle. This can be interpreted as meaning that we are neither monogamous not promiscuous. We are somewhat both.

Behavioural studies have revealed that over 80% of married men and over 50% of married women admit to having at least one extramarital affair – and the percentage of women is growing. With such an overwhelming majority of people actually engaging in this behaviour, what does that mean for the value or reasonableness of monogamy?

Genetic studies have also demonstrated that there are a significant percentage of children who have unrelated fathers. This seems to indicate that women are marrying one man, presumable for stability and protection and then having a child by someone else who may be more sexually attractive but less stable. I forget the exact percentage but it strikes me that it was something like one child in three fell into this category.

So it seems that we are really not all that monogamous so where did this obsession come from? If we look into the past, it is apparent that it is a relatively recent phenomenon. For most of our history, plural marriages, sex with slaves, mistresses and lovers were commonplace. As late as the middle of the last century, it was still accepted in Europe that a married man might have a mistress.

It seems that a combination of religious intolerance and Victorian prudery is to blame for imposing this unnatural state on marriage. As someone who has no inclination towards religion or its views on marriage, the only thing that really matters is our societal attitude towards it. We’ve been condition through the exaggerated situations in movies, reinforcement from peers who really haven’t thought deeply about it and some very outdated laws.

Why should plural marriage not be legal? Homosexual marriage is legal now. If three or more people want to be married, live together and like it then who does the government think it is to deny their happiness? Once again, the government is out of the loop. Maybe it would satisfy our biological urge to have a variety of partners to allow this so we don’t need to be promiscuous. Maybe it would relieve the stress of raising a child by supplying a support group. Maybe it would allow for more than one income in a household while still providing round-the-clock child care. Maybe it would help to prevent domestic violence. It seems to me there are a lot more positives about plural marriage than there is about monogamy.

Traffic Lights vs. Roundabouts

I’m a big fan of roundabouts. I’ve driven in numerous countries and I’ve rarely found anyone in these countries who actually thought that traffic lights were a good thing. They’re expensive, they use electricity and they need repairing. A roundabout can be as simple as a painted circle on the ground or as elaborate as a park and fountain setting. They provide a means to allow traffic to flow continuously, they don’t cost much and they are safer because they don’t cause the kind of frustrations or running the red that occurs with lights.

So why don’t we see more of them here? Stupidity, perhaps? In Europe, they are everywhere. It seems to work. I know people here don’t know how to use them properly but that’s because there aren’t enough of them and because people are not taught how to drive properly. I was taught by the Windsor police department. I also had private lessons. I learned ten times as much from the police course. One thing I would never do is take lessons from a relative or friend. Bad idea! That just propagates bad habits.

I heard that there have been some towns in England, I think, that have removed nearly all their traffic lights and the accident rate went down dramatically. So did the traffic congestion. Edmonton doesn’t even bother to time their traffic lights. I guess the city planning pinheads haven’t read about the benefits of doing this. You know … reducing pollution, frustration, traffic congestion … that sort of thing. It doesn’t seem to intrude on their navel-gazing world.

And where is our history? It’s not apparent to me. There are no statues, no promenades along the river valley with historical views, no interesting architecture from a century ago. I would like to see more roundabouts with statues and monuments to our history or even just flowers. These add to the flavour of our city. These would make a tourist want to come here for more than just the mall. I look at cities like Copenhagen, Paris, Prague, Vienna and Dubrovnik - some of the most beautiful cities in the world - and wonder, why would anyone come to Edmonton?

I’m digressing a bit by talking of historical context and architectural beauty in a city that apparently has no past. I just think that roundabouts would provide a forum for more than an improved traffic flow and economic benefits. I can’t remember the exact figure now but I remember hearing that it cost something like half a million dollars to equip an intersection with traffic lights. How many lightless roundabouts can you make for that? How much does a gallon of paint or a couple of wheel barrows of cement cost?

Skating on Thin Ice

I live on a lake. I chose to live here because I wanted to use the lake and because I knew that the property would appreciate faster than if there was no lake. It’s one of those storm drain lakes but the water is clean and full of crayfish. It’s nice to be able to use it for boating in the summer and skating in the winter.

Our lake has a little problem, however. The developer ploughed a lot of vegetation under it when it was being constructed. Ever since, this has been rotting and producing methane. It bubbles up though the water all year round. The methane is not sufficient that it can be smelled or to be harmful but it does stir up the water enough in the winter to leave some polynya’s. That is, there are holes in the ice in the winter. These are confined to a small area, roughly 10% of the lake, just by my house. They don’t move. Well, you wouldn’t expect them to that, would you? They grow and diminish in size with the temperature a bit but not too much. One can actually walk right up to the edges of these holes without any safety concerns as the ice is about 18 inches think at the height of winter.

We lived quite happily with this for 5 years or so. Some people would clear off two or three area around the far edges for skating - nowhere near the polynyas. Everything was idyllic.

Then one winter’s day we received a letter from the city banning everyone from using the lake for skating. They thought it was unsafe. The letter so upset people living around the lake that we wrote a petition to the city about this. So they set up a community meeting to “discuss” it with us. I could tell from the moment I entered the hall how they were going to behave. There were “Keep Off” and “Danger” signs all over the place. They were going to try to intimidate us.

There was an “impartial” facilitator for the meeting – hired by the city. He and then various representative of the city started off with some scaremongering about the safety and unpredictability of the lake. They stated that this was the only lake with such a problem and they didn’t know what caused it. Later they contradicted themselves by stating that there was another lake with the same problem. It was clear that they hadn’t done their homework and were now feeling like they were caught in the headlights of public scrutiny.

They then went on to say that they didn’t know how thick the ice was and that it had to be at least 6 inches thick before they would allow skating. This seemed rather strange as the international standard for safe ice thickness is 3 inches. Furthermore, we had actually bored holes over the lake and found it to be 18 inches thick except near the holes where it was only 8 inches thick. You can drive a truck on 18 inches of ice.

The next year, they did some sampling of the air and lake bed and sent us a letter telling us what we already knew. It was methane from rotting vegetation. They put a barrier around the holes. Everyone thought that was a reasonable solution. The following year, however, they started to revert back to their old habits and cordoned of a tiny portion of the lake at one end for skating. That’s how it sits now.

One has to wonder how their tiny brains work. I expect that they are being driven by some sort of paranoia over being sued if someone was stupid enough to fall in one of the holes. They seem to have forgotten that before electric refrigerators gang of men used to harvest ice from lakes for use in iceboxes. In some places, the ice was sent all over the world. These men would cut out chunks while standing right on the edge of the holes they made. This went on for decades with very few problems. The knowledge of how ice behaves seems to have escaped today’s engineers.

Now, it isn’t so much the gross incompetence displayed by the city staff that ticked the people around the lake. It wasn’t even the lack of knowledge or understanding of the cause or the outright contradictions that we were given. One expects that of city hall. No, it was the heavy handed approach to dealing with the issues that really pissed us off. There was no consultation with property owners before acting and an inappropriate response to the problem in the first place, continuing today.

They tried to tell us that we don’t have a right to skate on the lake. Excuse me? The lake is public property and we, as members of the public, have every right to determine for ourselves what we do or do not have a right to do. What the city and, indeed, every level of government, fail to realise is that, in a democracy, the people are in charge. Get it though your heads. We pay your salaries to do what we want done, not what you want to do to us. That’s why we have elections. It may not be the permanent employees who get the sack if they do something the public get upset about but they have to realise who they ultimately are serving.

US Spelling and Dates

Along with the dismantling of our heritage by our own government, we have to contend with the bellicose, egotistical, economic and cultural bully of the US. This is nowhere more evident than in the use of American spellings in Canada. Let’s get this straight. American spellings are only correct in the US. In Canada, we use international English spellings. We spell words with a “U” because that’s how we pronounce them. We mispronounced words like they do in the US then maybe not using a “U” would be an option.

Americans think they can just slap on a Canadian cover to an American magazine and sell it in Canada. Why aren’t they required to convert their spelling to Canadian usage? This isn’t to protect the publishing companies but out culture. It’s the same as having to translate everything on a cereal box into French. Let them translate their broken English into Canadian English.

I once worked for a company that was a call centre for a US cable company. We were given a manual to learn but it was all in US spellings. One of the people learning this stuff mentioned the bad spelling. The instructor was American and snippily said that the spellings were correct. Not in Canada they’re not! In fact, no where outside the US and its empire are they correct. They are US spellings and that’s where they should stay. After only three days , I left that company in utter disgust.

In an attempt to stem the tide of invading US culture, I’ve taken to pronouncing US spelled words in a different way to emphasise that they are not correct. For example, instead of pronouncing “center” as “senter”, I say “kenter”. “Honor” becomes “Hoe-nor”. “Labor” becomes “Lab-or”. If it’s spelled correctly, of course, I pronounce it correctly.

I also object to the backwards American month-day-year method of writing dates. The Canadian government standard is year-month-day. Personally, I prefer day-month-year because that’s what I have to use in my work and it makes sense in a progressive kind of way. It really confuses me to see dates like 02/06/2005. Does this mean the 6^th of February or the 2^nd of June? It depends on where you are and to whom you talk. Filling out forms for jobs, credit cards and so on I encounter lots of variation. There deems to be no standard in Canada. In the US, it is always the mixed up looking month-day-year. In Europe and Middle East, the format is always the simpler day-month-year. As long as it’s different from the US, I’m for it. Anything to distinguish ourselves from them is good.

While we’re at it can we please get rid of the baroque telephone format (780) 555-1212 in favour of something simpler? Since we have to use ten digit dialling now, it would make sense to write the phone number as 780.555.1212, 780-555-1212 or even the European way of 780 555 1212. The brackets are another American imposition and should be expunged.

Airport Security

I’ve always thought that airline travel was inconvenient and uncomfortable but now it’s just downright insulting. I’ve had to put up with seats that were too narrow for anyone but a 14 year old girl, black and blue knees, food that was as tasteless as the décor, overhead bins that were taken up with someone else’s rubbish because they brought too much on the plane and endless queues. In the old days, there were smokers, too. I hated that. It always seemed to me that no other business would be able to succeed while treating its customers as badly as airlines do.

Now we have a whole new era of “airport security” - and a new oxymoron. Who do they think they’re kidding? Does the government really think that they can fool us into believing that nail clippers are dangerous weapons? Do they think we are going to believe that shampoo, cosmetics or medicine bottles are potential explosives containers? What kind of drugs makes these idiots so paranoid?

Recently, I went on a holiday abroad. I had no problem going through security but my wife had to take off her belt and shoes because they had metal buttons on them. Do they think there’s a gun hidden inside them or something? It probably hasn’t crossed their pea-brained intellects that a belt can be used as a garrotte. Oh, my God! Let’s ban belts! If you’ve ever seen some of my wife’s shoes, you may think that they were dangerous weapons in the hands of an angry woman but I doubt that the buttons on them are deadly. They’re certainly less lethal than airport food.

I have a pair of metal grooming scissors that are about 3 inches long. They have dull points and won’t even cut my skin. They will cut my nose hair, however, and some security brainiac thinks this is a potential weapon? What a goofball. Other than feeling that an airplane is essentially a flying coffin, I don’t feel particularly afraid of nail clippers and grooming scissors in one.

As a paying customer, I don’t like to be treated like a potential criminal. Airport security measures are not particularly effective, reasonable or even useful. Sure, they might be able to find the guns but, remember, the 911 planes were taken over by insane clowns wielding utility knives. Offhand, I can think of half a dozen knife-like weapons that one could bring on board undetected today. And if one really wanted to bring more than a couple of pounds of explosives on board then why not just get more than one person involved? How many were on the 911 planes? So much for limiting the amount of shampoo. Yet another useless inconvenience. I don’t mind the X-rays on the bag but I object to stripping. If we don’t do something to stop the paranoid madness then we’ll be subjected to surreptitious X-rays on ourselves in the not too distant future.

Another thing that all the security rhetoric about Islamic extremists doesn't seem to get is that they don’t even know that Canada exists. Heck, the US barely even knows that we exist. We’re not a target for attack despite what our PM may say – the US is. If someone did hit us, who would know? No other countries report news in Canada generally speaking. Our currency isn’t even accepted anywhere else. Denmark might smirk a little because we’re in a pubescent pissing contest with them over some uninhabited arctic sand bar. Would anyone else care? I doubt it. There isn’t anything worth bombing here. We have no iconic financial towers, no global economic clout and no army that rushes about invading countries in retaliation for giving us a bloody nose. We wait to be asked politely before going. Our government doesn’t offend anyone except its own citizens.

We live in a semi-free society. Taking away our freedom to cut our nose hair and finger nails is simply too much of a totalitarian gesture. It is not a reasonable limitation on our freedom. It does not make us safer. It is a futile attempt to justify the unjustifiable. What governments fail to comprehend is that, in a democracy, they are not the ones in control, the people are. One day they will push us too far. To paraphrase an old adage, even a Canadian will turn.

The only thing that really scares me is the people doing the security. Their blatant paranoia and disregard for their customers’ rights, their futile restrictions and unwavering aversion to reason and their blind insistence that this nonsense is for my safety is what really scares me. Why not put all the money and effort wasted on such useless and ineffective security towards a better air traffic control system? Now that would make me feel a whole lot safer.