There's a reason why I love this town

Yesterday after work I went to Chapters. I walked thorough the door and the first thing I saw was Joel Plaskett. The actual human. Just walking around with some kid. I've never seen him in Halifax/Dartmouth in a non-performance capacity. It's so cool that he just lives here.

PSA

Spring Forward!

Kon-Tiki

I saw a trailer online recently for a movie called Kon-Tiki, a dramatization of that time Thor Heyerdahl jumped on a raft and drifted from Peru to Polynesia just to prove a point. Science was so much cooler back then. “You don’t believe my theory? Well, I’m just going to build a raft and live on it for 100 days to show you how right I am.” Anyway, I was reading about the movie (which looks beautiful) and found out that Heyerdahl filmed his actual journey and made a documentary about it, which won an Oscar back in the day. I got a copy of the doc from the library and watched it.  

Bunny Scale

Oz sent me an interesting philosophical question about the Bunny Scale which I want to share.

“I saw two bunnies fighting each other (literally boxing at each other with their front paws) over an apple core on my walk home today. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??!!!”

Firstly, Oz, why didn’t you take a video? That shit would totally go viral.

Secondly, the Bunny Scale was originally intended to predict how good a day will be, not to be used a posteriori. So I’m not sure what seeing bunnies at the end of your day means.

That being said, the original classification of a 2 Bunny Day was:

2 bunnies: A good day – I’ll only think of quitting my program once or twice

So, I suppose if you were to see two bunnies fighting, maybe that’s a physical manifestation of your inner struggle to finish your thesis. Maybe the apple core is your thesis and the bunnies were like the good part of your brain that wants to work on it and the bad part of your brain that doesn’t. Or something. I never actually took philosophy. 

"The Miracle and the Horror."

See Chasing Ice if you get the chance. It is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long time. As a climate change warning cry, it is very effective. But it also has a nice exploration of field work in extreme conditions (anything less than success is normal). It also, interestingly, touches on some of the things that are wrong with modern science and how we communicate to the public, and what Science as a career has become. It touches on what I know a lot of my peers feel - that that they love science but don't want to be scientists.

Mostly, though, it presents beautiful, simple, elegant, horrifically scary, effective, visceral proof of climate change impacts on shockingly short time scales.

This movie is probably the only chance you will ever have to see these glaciers, since I do not see how we'll ever get them back.

Headline of the Day

Iceland tests find meat pies contain no meat at all

Source. 

Where the fuck have I been?

I’ve been busy since Christmas and went on hiatus to focus on my “life” instead of sporadic blog posts. In December I decided to plunge head first into chronic debt and I bought a house. Like, an actual house. On land. I own property. It’s pretty insane. I was so absurdly excited about it for about a month. Then the excitement turned into the stark realization that someone who hates housekeeping is probably a bad candidate for homeownership – but it’s too late. Really, though, I fucking love my little house. It’s so bright, and quiet, and lovely. I complain about cleaning it (I swear, the first two weeks I was there it felt like all I did was mop), but I don’t regret my decision at all.  

I'm not actually going to post a picture of my house on the internet. Instead here is a picture of my driveway and lots of snow.