The Fractal Theory of Canada

Background.

Given a community A and an adjacent community C, such that A is prosperous and populous, and C is less populous and prosperous, and nonreciprocal interest of C in the internal affairs of A, often C will need ego compensation by occasional noisy and noisome display of its superiority over A. In this case C is said to be the canada of A, C = canada(A).

For example, it has been previously established that

canada(California) = Oregon
canada(New York) = New Hampshire
canada(Australia) = New Zealand
canada(England) = Scotland

The Fractal Theory of Canada.

For all A there exists C such that

C = canada(A)

For example,
canada(USA) = Canada
canada(Canada) = Quebec
canada(Quebec) = Celine Dion

It would appear that the hierarchy would bottom out an individual. However an individual is actually a community of tissues, tissues of cells, cells of molecules, and so forth down into the quantuum froth.

canada(brain) = pineal gland
canada(intestines) = colon
...
canada(electron) = neutrino

and so on. There is no bottom.

"My God! It's full of Canadas!"

Stolen, in its entirety from my beloved Language Log, here.

Jesus doesn't want me for a sunbeam.

For various reasons, seemed appropriate. I'm pretty sure I've posted the Vaseline's original; but my, don't expect me to cry for all the reasons that died. Don't expect me to cry, don't expect me to lie, don't expect me to die for thee.

Mount Wilson Observatory Threatened

Mount Wilson Observatory, outside of Los Angeles, was the place that Edwin Hubble discovered the redshift-- it taught us that the universe is expanding; one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century.

Now, it's threatened by the Station fire. (Updated) The picture, above, seems to be the last webcam photo available, from just before 5 am, Sept. 1. I finally got it to load.

Please be safe, Observatory.

At 6 in the morning, Sept 1, as shown in the picture above, the Observatory looks safe, but the right-hand side glow from the fire looks pretty menacing.


Here's a site with time lapse photography of the fire approaching.

And here's the Mount Wilson Observatory webcam site. You might get through. It could happen.

I Really Do Love America

"It's time to let mighty eagles soar once more."

I present the iniminable John Ashcroft singing a song he wrote and sang all by himself. Such great flag shots; I'm such a patriot.


ps. Iraq had a free health care system before our invasion. Now it's in shambles.

[In Iraq] the UNICEF/WHO report noted that prior to 1990, 97 percent of the urban dwellers and 71 percent of the rural population had access to free primary health care; just 2 percent of hospital beds were privately managed.

Dolphins are hip, humans are square, or Whole lotta hoopla goin' on.

Here dolphins demonstrate their awesomeness by blowing air bubbles in some magical way (I suspect rainbows are invoved, though I can't see any in the video) and then playing with them. One dolphin figured out how to make these air rings at Orlando SeaWorld, and then taught his compadres. Pretty cool, huh? I am reminded of a Douglas Adams quote:

Man has always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much...the wheel, New York, wars and so on...while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man...for precisely the same reason.

I suspect the dolphins are on to something


How do they do it?

Several months ago, curators noticed a bottlenose dolphin at Dolphin Cove had learned to expel air from its blowhole. With a flick of its head, the dolphin then created a circle of air -- a silvery bubble ring. Curators then saw the dolphin using its rostrum (the "bottlenose" part) to twist, spin and re-shape the ring, sometimes biting a bigger ring to make a smaller one.

Full article found here.