Monday, November 30, 2009

small town....

You know you live in a small town when...

The Mayor, in his monthly chatty newsletter has this to say...

cut and paste follows....

Protecting Our Pigs in Osgoode Ward
Last week, City of Ottawa by-law officers were called to pick up a "pig on the loose" on River Road, near Mitch Owens Road. It took four people to lift the large porker into a vehicle to be taken to the City's pound at Leo's Livestock in Greely where it was held.


The next problem for By-law and Regulatory Services was to find the rightful owner of the pig on the loose. By-law called on the Rural Affairs Office to use their contacts in Osgoode Ward to assist with finding the farmer with the missing pig.


Staff would like to thank River Road resident Klaus Beltzner of Osgoode Ward, who after getting the call for assistance from the Rural Affairs Office, notified the City of the appropriate name and telephone number of a local resident looking for a missing pig, and helping the City reunite the pig with its owner.


Oh gracious me... are we hicks or what!!!???

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Saturday. Already!


Gracious gracious me...is it Saturday already? What happened to the last three weeks?
Well...lets see....in no particular order...

Got flu shots, went to the States twice to pick up and drop off orders, taught the last of the Monday and Friday fighting classes, and am progressing well with the Sunday classes, built a breast-back-tasset-and fauld combo in 16 gauge for Riley, designed and built angel wings for Chris, (check out the armouring blog...http://southtowerarmouringguild.blogspot.com) built breast-back-tasset and faulds in 18 gauge for Chris, built vambrace-elbow-rerebraces, as well as cuisses and knee cops for Chris, helped Mark build his cuisses, arms and articulated knees for his wedding, went to a wedding, ran a tournament involving slashing pumpkins to death, got a medical appointment (blood pressure is okay) and a dental appointment (got a filling collapsing into toxic mercury slush), got snow tires on the car and I'm sure somewhere in there is a night or two of sleeping.

I could not have done it without the assistance of Mark, Jenna, Rob, AJ, and of course, Brenda.

Now I have to winterize the motorcycle...but first....a last bike ride! And on the 28th of November no less! Oh My Sweet Potatoes, that will be a cold 'un! But I just gots ta do it, just to say I HAVE! So in a couple hours, I'll drive to my friend Jim's place for his surprise birthday party. That should be fun!!! Cold enough to freeze the nuts off a steel bridge, but still, fun!

Now that the pressure is off, we are getting ready to travel on what is not "quite" the trip of a lifetime, but it "should" be a good one! Jeff and Andrea will be looking after the ranch while we are away, Mark will be in the shop finishing up his armour, and Brenda and I will be bouncing around countries in Europe like billiard balls on a glass table!

So what do I have to do in the few days remaining? Hmmm. Pack. Make appointments with curators in England and Malta, finish up a chain mail coif for Alan, update my web page with a nice new front page intro (www.southtower.on.ca) appropriate for winter in Canada, and try to support Brenda who is actually doing all the work around this place. I'll be posting updates on this blog on a fairly regular basis over the next few weeks....in lieu of postcards. Don't know how many pictures I'll be able to load up, but we have a couple of gigs in the memory card on the camera, so I think I'll be posting the diary, and filling it up with pictures in January. This has worked well in the past.

Oh, and for what it's worth...the helmet up at the top of the page is not mine...its a commercial helmet to which I attached wings. You don't think I had time to actually make that helmet too did you?

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Sand into stone....

http://www.ted.com/talks/magnus_larsson_turning_dunes_into_architecture.html

Magnus Larsson is an architect who was inspired to turn sand dunes into habitable structures. To me, this is the first new construction idea I have seen in years. Again, I am gob smacked at the new ideas that are coming out of the modern age!
That link above is a TED talk... and like all the TED speakers, Mr. Larsson has stepped up to the plate with some amazing ideas. Hats off!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Mark and A.J.'s Wedding

Radiant Bride....proud groom
OMG, I can't believe I did that!
Don't they look like a nice couple?
The honour guard. The arch of swords.

The forfeit to pass the crossed swords
After they pass under the arch, the swords come down.

Nice people dressed for the occassion.

Mark in his dancing clothes.

The wedding cake. Really!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Hope....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSgiXGELjbc

The future of computing...

http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

OHG dude...I want one!!!!!

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Flu shots

For reasons I don't understand, there are people who think that somehow getting a flu shot is dangerous. My good friend J. sent me a video perporting to be an ex minister of health in a European country who spouted line after line of absolute bullshit about how governments are trying to kill millions by forcing them to get flu shots. This has been recognized as a bandwagon by such great scientists as Mike Wallace, Jennifer MacCarthy and Charlie Sheen as an awesome way to keep their cooling pots on the front burner. They call people names...calling them "Sheeple" when in reality it is they who are being chased from nut bar paddock to nut bar paddock by the barking of the con-men's dogs.

The H1N1 flu strain killed 8 million people back in 1918. The modern h1n1 virus has proven to BE that same flu. This is hardly fear mongering. Its a statement of simple, chilling fact. It IS the 1918 Spanish flue, back with a few new wrinkles to make it even nastier.
http://virus.stanford.edu/uda/

The last time we saw H1N1 was in 1979. 200 soldiers got it at Fort Dix, one died, 12 were hospitalized, most of the rest of the 200 had little or no symptoms yet tested positive as carriers. So "feeling fine" is not a good thing to go by. These were healthy individuals who got sick, they had no underlying problems. Would it be fear mongering to feel that if they didn't isolate the virus it would have gone through the population? This is the flue...it goes through the population! Interestingly enough, the H1N1 is not as contagious as the regular flue. Thats a good thing. If it were as contagious as, say, bird flu, or even the usual seasonal flu, then we would have had millions dead in the streets. That we didn't is because the medical community stopped it in its tracks.

They were so worried about it at the time that they rushed a vaccine into the marketplace which had some contamination. This old fashioned way of making a flue vaccine was the problem, and that method is no longer used. The syndroms (Gillian-Barre) associated with the contamination of 1979 swine flue vaccine hit as many as 9 in a million. 46 million shots resulted in 4000 injuries, some deaths. In Canada, we had a different, more modern vaccine, and no confirmed cases of GBS due to the flue shot. ( http://www.gbs-cidp.org/ ) Compare to 1 death in 200 from the disease itself. So the medical community learned from the mass vaccinations, there was no epidemic, and everybody learned from the mistakes. When the bird flu (potential) epidemic hit (SARS) we were ready for it. The bird flu was much more contagious, and just as nasty. It was contained by fast responding health care professionals, many of whom themselves were felled by the disease.

There was no cover up....no conspiracy....no Illuminatti plan to reduce the population of the earth by two thirds. If there was a conspiracy involving the health care workers, then why did so many of their own die from it?

The internet is a good resource...and I don't pretend to trust it any farther than I can throw this old computer. However, regarding matters of plain ordinary "history" (instead of opinion), things like this can be checked. It is a wonderful fact checking tool. Every statement that woman made can be checked, and I quit checking after the first 4 lies, and simply decided that what we have here is a very articulate con-man. Or con-woman I guess. I will cut and paste a bit more of history because even MY opinions need to be checked and backed up.

cut and paste from http://www.emedicinehealth.com/swine_flu/article_em.htm

The 2009 outbreak of swine influenza (novel H1N1)

In March and April 2009, hundreds of cases of human respiratory illness were reported in Mexico that were suspected or confirmed to be caused by a novel swine-type influenza virus. By April, confirmed cases were also reported in the United States. The first reported cases in the U.S. came from San Diego County and Imperial County in California and Guadalupe County in Texas. Reports from other states rapidly followed, and the disease spread rapidly around the globe. The World Health Organization (WHO) has officially declared the 2009 swine flu to be a pandemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that more than 1 million Americans were infected with swine influenza by June 2009. By August 2009, more than 170 countries and territories reported swine flu cases. By October, 46 U.S. states were reporting widespread outbreaks. By late October, the virus had been confirmed to have caused more than 1,000 deaths in the U.S., with almost 100 of the deaths in children. Approximately 6% of deaths are in pregnant women, although only 1% of the population is pregnant. Physician visits, hospitalizations, and deaths in the fall of 2009 all exceeded seasonal thresholds. On Oct. 25, 2009, President Obama declared a national emergency as a result of the outbreak. This allows public-health officials additional power to allow waive some regulations to facilitate patient care and will allow hospitals to set up separate facilities to isolate sick patients.


cut and paste ends.


This is history.

A thousand deaths.

Visualize that for a moment....thats what happens without vaccinations....


With this history available at the click of a mouse, all easily checkable history, how can any body really be torn on the question of whether vaccinations are good? There is no confusion....just people who like to scare other people. I could make a case that there are more financial reasons to scare people than there are to reassure them....but I'll save that for another day.

For now, I am going to get my flu shot as soon as it is available.



Bil

Friday, November 13, 2009

Vets on parade

So now every April I sit on my porch and watch my parade pass before me
I see my old comrads, how proudly they march
Reliving their days of past glory

And I see them again, those brave wounded men
The tired old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask,
What are they marching for
And I ask myself the same question.

(from a tune about the Anzacs in Gallipolli)

(well, here, its armistice day, November 11th. But the feeling is the same...)