2010 Christmas Letter

Greetings to all our friends and relatives:

You know how kids say the darndest things? Here’s a few gems from our grandchildren (and their parents) from the past year . . .

Grampa Pete, “Erik, get your finger out of your mouth.”
Erik, 3, “It’s a thumb!”

Duke, 2, who is big for his age, proclaimed one day, “I’m big . . . and small!”

Duke’s sister, Kate, 4, “I’m shy and so is Duke”. (They might be shy but only until you get to know them.)

Molly, 4, “My best friend is Uncle Murray . . . he’s not a kid anymore because he had a baby.” (Murray, 44, and his wife Frances, recently had their first child.)

Julie, 8, “At recess today a boy ‘attackled’ me and ripped my ski suit.” Attackled - what a great word. Although you’ve never heard it before, you know exactly what it means.

Sid, 34, “I lose interest if it’s not interesting.” (Thank you Captain Obvious!)

Jill, 28, in an attempt to justify her actions at the breakfast table, “You don’t have to be sick to have a beer.” Say what?

With 12 grandchildren, and parents who share them freely, there is no shortage of life in our household. Tonight is a typical night, 3 grandchildren here for a sleepover while their parents are on a date. And the great thing is, they are all good kids. Not a rotten apple in the bunch.

This past year we erected a large treehouse for the young and young at heart. It gets a lot of use. The picture below was taken on the treehouse steps. (Click on the picture for a larger view.)



We enclosed a picture of the grandchildren in last year’s letter and several people wanted to know who was who so this time we’ve included the names (and who belongs to who). The names are in order from top to bottom, left to right. Siblings are in matching colours:

Julie, Carly, Kimberly,
Molly, Emily, Kate,
Peter, Erik, Ashley,
Alexander, Karl, Duke

Those in:
- black belong to son Greig and wife Carrie,
- red belong to son Sid and wife Scottie,
- blue belong to daughter Jody and husband Jeremy (Hilderman), and
- green belong to daughter Jill and husband Aaron (Sovdi).

Besides spending time with the family, what else have we been doing? Well once again we took a trip to Vegas just after New Years and had a great time. Bonnie’s sister Avis and husband Richard joined us. They made great travelling companions and the four of us are booked to do it again this year.

The first of May we travelled to Minneapolis to attend an event honoring Daniel Nelson, Pete’s great grandfather on his mother’s side. He was a prominent Chinese missionary of the early 1900’s. A number of other descendants showed up which turned it into an impromptu family reunion. We all went out for supper – about 50 of us. Pete met relatives he never knew he had. It was pretty cool!

On the way home from Minneapolis we stopped in on Elaine Chilson of Sisseton, SD. She’s the family historian for the Frostad clan. We have been corresponding with Elaine since we met at a Frostad reunion in Kincaid, Sask, about 16 years ago. We were able to collect a lot more information from Elaine about our interesting past; pictures, artifacts, and stories. Elaine is a fascinating person.

We did the Sturgis run on our motorcycle again this year. It was quite possibly the best run we’ve had so far. We count the days till we head out on the open road again. We really like our tours out to Vancouver Island which we haven’t done for a couple of years so we hope to make it this coming summer.

We did, however, make it as far west as Pentiction on the motorcycle this summer to attend a week long bicycle wine tour of the Penticton area organized by Jody. That’s right, we parked the motorcycle for a week while be peddled our buns on a tandem bicycle to a number of wineries in the Penticton area. This was the second time Jody has organized a family wine tour and it’s a blast. Thanks, Jody!

Well that pretty much wraps things up for another year. Pete is still enjoying his work at Magna IV Engineering and we are heading out to Alberta for the company Christmas party next week.

Hope this finds you all well and have a great 2011!

Pete and Bonnie

Mozart ripped off my song

So here we go. My long awaited thoughts on the global warming debate.

I must state at the outset that I think there is nothing more important than looking after our planet and it's inhabitants; human and otherwise. This includes things like reducing pollution, wise use of our resources, and the elimination of poverty, hunger, war . . . all the things that make this a better world for all to live in.

To help us in our quest, we can use our knowledge of the universe - our ever increasing knowledge of science, to guide our decisions.

On the subject of global warming, I think it is very important to get the science right and I want to enlist Mozart to help me with this discussion . . .

Suppose I write a song and then someone discovers that it's a rip off of something Mozart wrote.

Is there any possible way that I could convince you that I'm the original artist and that Mozart plagiarized me? (By the way, Mozart died 163 years before I was born.)

Of course the answer is no. Unless, of course, I could get in a time machine, travel back, and somehow put the tune in his head.

In fact, there's a general rule we can use for all such questions. When event A occurs before event B, there is no way event B can cause event A.

What does this have to do with global warming?

There is a field of study that you may have heard about. It's the analysis of ice core samples. They find a very old and deep deposit of ice; popular sites include the Antarctic and Greenland, and they drill out a core and analyse it. They can determine all kinds of things dating back hundred's of thousands of years. In particular, as it relates to this article, they can determine earth's temperature in relation to atmospheric concentrations of CO₂.

Over the last several years I have tracked down as many scientific ice core studies as I can find. The abstracts are freely available on the Internet and, in some cases, so is the entire study. In other cases, to read the entire study, you have to pay a subscription to the scientific journal that published the study. Since these are scientific papers, they are quite technical and I don't claim to understand all the science being discussed but it's not hard to get the drift, especially from the abstract.

One of the more famous studies on the subject was conducted in 2003 by Caillon et al. It's only three pages long and, as scientific papers go, comparatively easy to understand. I encourage you to read it. Caillon et al concluded that changes in global temperatures occur 600 years before changes in CO₂ concentrations (with a statistical accuracy of plus or minus 200 years).

All of the other studies I have found have come to the same general conclusion although the study periods vary as do the time between atmospheric changes and CO₂ concentrations. The shortest time lag is 800 years plus or minus 200 years (the study mentioned above). Others list a longer time lag, some as much as 5000 years.

Simply stated, they all found that changes in temperature occur before changes in CO₂!

Until someone proves that there has been a systematic mistake in all these studies, which could happen, the case for CO₂ being the driving factor for changes in global temperatures is not possible.

It's not possible for the same reason that Mozart could not have ripped off a song that wasn't written till at least a century and a half after his death.

Obviously there's lots more to say about all of this. But I'm going to just let what I've raised sit with you for a while.

Check out the studies. See if you can find anyone who has successfully disputed them. As I said, I've been looking for a while now and haven't found anybody that's successfully challenged them.
There was one study, which I can't seem to lay my fingers on right now, that was actually initiated to disprove the notion that CO₂ changes occur after temperature changes. But once the scientific team had done their own analysis of the data, they came to the same conclusion as everyone else. Their final report actually supported and endorsed the other studies. They ended up converts! I gotta see if I can find that study, it was quite interesting.

As always, please feel free to provide your comments or ask questions. I'll try to answer them.

How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand.

In many respects I have always felt like Maria.

Shuddup. I don't mean I want to be a girl. I mean, for most of my life I have felt like a round peg in a square hole.

It is never more evident than when I try to write an article about my opinion on just about anything. For example, I've been trying to write a blog about my opinion on climate change for months. It has gone through dozens of revisions and I'm just not happy with it.

What I'm starting to realize is that writing blogs about opinions is very hard, at least it is for me.

Problem #1 - my opinion on global warming, or any other subject for that matter, is a fluid thing; it keeps changing.

Problem #2 - opinions, by definition, are controversial. I've PO'd enough people in my life already, I'm not particularly fond of adding to the list.

Problem #3 - it takes a lot of words to formulate and defend an opinion. Blog entries seem like such small containers for such large objects.

So instead I'm just going to write down my thoughts and observations in manageable chunks. Points to ponder, if you will.

I'm just going to be like Maria. I'm just going to be me.

The great left shoe mystery

I've never said this to anyone before, but I have a problem with my left shoe. And it's been bothering me for years, maybe decades.

No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to avoid getting scuff marks on the top front of my left shoe. I'll get a brand new pair of shoes and, in what seems likes minutes, I'll have a scuff or soil mark on the top front of my left shoe. It's not on the very front of my shoe like I'm stubbing my toe on things, it's higher, on the top front of the shoe.

Here, I'll go take a picture of my shoes right now. Guaranteed there's a scuff or a dust mark on my left shoe.



See I told you so. And as God is my witness, I did not set this picture up. I didn't have to. It's always there like a curse.

I never get marks on my right shoe. Not like this. Not ever.

Now, for many of you who know me and also ride motorcycles, solving this mystery seems like child's play. The scuff marks are from the gear shifter on the motorcycle. (You operate a motorcycle shifter with your left foot. You tuck your toe under the shifter and pull up to shift up and push down to shift down.) And for the longest time, I had assumed that was the cause. And, indeed, when you ride, you do get scuff marks on the top of your shoe, just exactly like the ones I get. I've had plenty of scuff marks from the shifter on my bike.

But I get these marks in the winter. Today is March 26th. I haven't been on my bike for months.

For a while I had this theory that I was tucking my left foot under the brake pedal of the car and getting the mark from the back of the brake pedal, but I've never caught myself doing that. I even tried putting my foot behind the brake pedal to see if it feels at all familiar. Nope. Nothing.

Now I know you are thinking I'm just a little touched. After dealing with this subtle little problem, you can bet your life I'm a little touched. In fact I'm starting to get a LOT touched.

Another theory I had was maybe it's the way I walk. Maybe when I walk my right foot somehow scuffs the top of my left foot. Well, I've never caught myself doing that either. (OK, fine, I tried that too. It also did not feel at all familiar.)

Most of the time it's not a big deal. A little dust or scuff on my left shoe . . . who cares. But lots of times I'll be going out somewhere special and I decide to polish my shoes. It never fails that when I get there I have to wipe off my left shoe.

Today, quite by accident, I caught myself doing something that causes the scuff marks! I'm so happy! I can now move on to bigger and better things!

Cheers.

P.S. You want to know what is causing my scuff marks? Post a freak'n comment and I'll tell you. I never get comments :(

Hands up, all those who hate barbershop music

I wouldn't say I hate barbershop music but it's just that it all seems to sound the same.

Then along comes the Cottontown Chorus from Great Britain. You might hate barbershop music but I challenge anyone who watches this to say they didn't enjoy this particular performance.

But you have to play fair. To take up my challenge you have to watch this to the end because it's a three song set and the last one is the best: 'Fat Bottomed Girls'.

Thanks to my friend, Doug Schmidt, for bringing these guys to my attention.

Here they are at the final concert of the 2009 European Barbershop Convention where they placed second. I'd like to hear who came in first . . .

So you think you're tuff . . .

Meet the water bear (or tardigrade for all you biologists out there).



Cuddily little fellow, isn't he? Water bears have 8 little legs and range in size from 0.1 mm to 1.5 mm.

But appearances can be deceiving. Water bears are perhaps the toughest creatures on the planet. Check out this entry from Wikipedia:

Tardigrades . . . are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, almost a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space. In September 2007, tardigrades were taken into low Earth orbit on the FOTON-M3 mission and for 10 days were exposed to the vacuum (and extreme sterilizing UV radiation) of space. After they were returned to Earth, it was discovered that many of them survived and laid eggs that hatched normally, making these the only animals shown to be able to survive the vacuum of space.

So I was just thinking . . .

Suppose a few water bears are hang'n out having a few pints and one of them says, "hold my beer and watch this". What exactly would it take to impress the other water bears! Hitch a ride on the outside of the spaceshuttle for a week long rip into outer space? Nope, too easy. Never mind jumping into a frozen lake after being in a sauna like the Swedes. How about floating around in a pot of boiling water and then taking a swan dive into a vat of liquid nitrogen! Yawn, been there, done that.

I got it! What could be more excruciating than watching a weekend marathon of this:

Wanna make me cry?

Just play this . . .



It's my favourite song. Every time I hear it, I crash . . . hard. And Celine Dion probably sings it better than any other current singer (Kate Smith, of course, was the master).

And ya, I know, it's about the US but they don't actually say 'United States of America', they just say 'American', so I imagine this includes Canada. I don't think I'm the only Canadian who loves this song. Kate used to sing it before the start of Flyer home games. One night when the Flyers travelled to Montreal for a playoff game she went along and sang it in the Forum. The video is not very good but listen to that crowd, and when she sings, I'm a blubbering mess . . .



Here's another one - 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God'. Dumb hey?

The first time it messed me up was at Pastor Wayne Berg's funeral in Estevan. There had to be a hundred Pastors there; all sitting together. When the song began, they all stood up en masse with the rest of the congregation and belted it out. It was powerful. It had the sound of a huge male voice choir singing in unison. (Male voice choirs are the best, sorry ladies, and unision singing is the most powerful of all.) I was a wreck. It brought back memories of my Dad's funeral.

You see, when a Pastor dies, pretty much all the Pastors he ever knew, and a few more for good measure, come to pay their last respects. It's just something they do.

I don't even try to sing this song in church. I just listen . . .



I'll wrap this post up with one final song that got the tears streaming; Nikki Yanofsky's rendition of our national anthem at the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies. Would I prefer this version all the time? Nope. But Nikki is a jazz singer so the Olympic committee, I think wisely, turned her loose and let her fly. And did she ever fly. Go, Nikki, Go!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc1_vfBfLxI

2009 Christmas Letter

Our twelve grandchildren, Aug 21, '09

Bonnie asked me to write a 'short' Christmas letter. I told her I didn't have time to write a short one so a long one will have to do. Rambling aimlessly is one of my special talents. Writing a concisely organized epistle, on the other hand, takes a lot more time, effort and skill - attributes which I have in short supply.

We've had three additions to the Frostad clan since last year's letter; Alexander (Greig and Carrie's fourth and their first boy), Carly (Sid and Scottie's third), and Karl (Jody and Jeremy's third). Bonnie just finished sewing their monogrammed Christmas stockings so we now have 22 hung on the staircase.

Last year I confessed to shedding a tear when Aaron, Jill, Kate, and Duke ended their stay with us to move into the new house they built (luckily their new house is only three minutes away). Kate and I were usually first up in the morning and she would sit quietly on my knee in the dark (it was in the winter) as I read my morning 'paper' on the internet and watched the sun come up over Long Lake.

We will soon experience that same bitter-sweet moment when Jody, Jeremy, Peter, Molly, and Karl move into their new house in Lumsden which they also built themselves. We have enjoyed having them here for the past few months and we will be sad to see them go.

Speaking of new houses - this past year, Greig and Carrie moved into their new house, also in Lumsden. They purchased an RTM (Ready to Move) home and built a basement to put it on. It's located right next to the school in Lumsden; an ideal location. When their new house came down the street on the back of a huge truck I told one of the onlookers they bought it on ebay.

Sid and Scottie are firmly planted in Regina Beach. As testament to this, they added a second story on to their house when Carly arrived so they didn't have to move! So everyone is within a 15 minute drive. Or a better way to put it, we can leave our house and drive by all of our kid's houses and be back home in about 35 minutes! It's awesome.

We started 2009 off last January with a trip to Las Vegas - just Bonnie and me. We've done this a few times now and it's actually quite nice to just be together. We spend so much time with family and friends, which we really like, don't get me wrong, but being together, just the two of us for a few days, is pretty special. We are going again this coming January. We like to take in a few shows. This year we have the Phantom of the Opera booked. Funny thing is, we've never seen it so that should be awesome. And we will probably see the Rat Pack Review again for the umpteenth time. We never tire of it. Four excellent impersonators recreate the legendary Rat Pack show of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Frank Sinatra, and Joey Bishop. And as an added bonus 'Marilyn Monroe' makes a guest appearance singing a JFK-style happy birthday on the lap of some old geezer she finds in the audience.

In late March we took my mother, Myrtle, on what turned out to be an impromptu 82nd birthday tour, out to the west coast and back. The trip coincided with her birthday so she garnered three birthday cakes along the way! She had been caring for Willy for quite a few years up to that point and when he passed away peacefully in November 2008, at the age of 96, Mom was ready to catch up on a lot of what she had been missing. So off we went to visit as many of her descendants and relatives as we could in a 14 day period. We visited all of my siblings (three sisters) - Dena and most of her family in Camrose, AB, Petrine and most of her family in Barriere (and Vancouver), BC, and then Kristine and her clan in Vancouver and Victoria with bonus visits to my mother's sister, Evelyn and husband, Evelyn's daughter Reanne and family, also on the island, Mom's niece, Geraldine and husband, in Mission, BC, and Mom's brother Sid and family in Medicine Hat, AB.

Mom's only direct descendants we did not visit were her grandsons Michael and Darren and their families in Lethbridge, AB, and Vibank, SK. respectively. We plan to take Mom for a visit to Darren and family this Christmas when she is here. They are only a little over an hour away. And we will have to make plans to visit Michael and family sometime soon.

Mom handled the trip very well and when I asked her the other day where she wanted to go next she said she wanted to do the same trip over again but this time to make sure we included the ones we missed the first time around. Sounds good to me.

Of course one of our yearly highlights is our annual motorcycle trip in August to the Sturgis Rally and Races in South Dakota. This spring we got a new ride; a 2006 Goldwing with low miles in like-new condition. There was nothing wrong with our old Goldwing. It would have surely outlasted us but you only go around once right?

If you aren't familiar with the new Goldwings you would be amazed to see what they put on a top notch touring motorcycle these days. It has factory GPS navigation that talks to you and a stereo you can listen to at highway speeds no problem. However, Bonnie prefers to listen to her own tunes on her iPod headphones and I, the purr of the engine, the whistle of the wind, and occasionally the sound of my own voice belting out a tune. It also has heated seats and handlebars, warm air registers for your feet, and an on-board air compressor that is used to adjust the air suspension as you ride. And there's a dial to adjust the aim of your headlights as you travel (pretty handy, actually). We can literally ride twice as far in a day as we used to and feel better in the process. It's just too cool. Oh, and it's stupid fast.

You might recall from last year's letter that after 6 years of retirement, out of the blue, I was given a contract offer I couldn't refuse. So I began working again - for Magna IV Engineering out of Edmonton on a project up in Fort McMurray. That project came to a premature halt after just a few months when oil prices fell through the floor. So I was back home again.

This summer, after being off for about 6 months, the same company called me up and asked if I'd be interested in heading up the company expansion to Saskatchewan. Sounded good to me so now I work here in good 'ol Saskatchewan. They are such a good company to work for. I call them the WestJet of engineering companies. They have this crazy idea that if you treat your employees well they are productive, they stick around, and everybody wins. And does it ever work. Who knew! I told my boss the other day they may never get rid of me.

Bonnie continues to be herself, replete with boundless energy; especially after she finally found a doctor who cleared up her occasional shortness of breath with the right diagnosis and therapy. She excels, beyond my ability to put into words, in her God-given gifts as a wife, mother and grandmother. Just watching her exhausts me.

Feel free to drop us a line, or better yet, drop in for a visit. We are home most days.

Pete and Bonnie Frostad.

This Little Light of Mine

It starts out slow, but stick with it, we get a-rock'n.

You think we could get Tiger to come to Regina Beach

Did you know that some of the high profile golfers get appearance fees to play in certain tournaments? The first time I heard about this was a number of years ago when Greg Norman was paid $1 million to play in some out-of-the-way tournament. He got the money just for showing up regardless of how he played. Where do I sign up for this!

This week Tiger is playing in Australia for the first time in 11 years. The Golf Channel website reported yesterday that Australia is paying him $3 million dollars just to step off his private jet onto Australian soil! And to top it off, the Australian government is paying half the fee.

Some people might be appalled by this. You've heard the rhetoric before, "professional athletes make too much money". It is true that there are much better causes than paying Tiger to hang out at your golf club. Just think about how many hungry people you could feed with $3 million.

But check this out. In The Golf Channel article, John Brumby, premier of the Australian province of Victoria, where the tournament is being played, stated that Tiger's appearance would have an economic return of at least $19 million. If your ultimate goal is to 'do good', you can do a lot more good with $19 million than you can with 3. What Australia does with the money is anybodies guess but if I had $3 million and could turn it into 19 just by having some guy step off a plane, I'd do it to.

And just a side note. Tiger won't just take the 3 million bones and burn it in his fireplace. He puts a lot of his money into the Tiger Woods Foundation which helps underprivileged kids. The rest of his earnings, now estimated by Forbes to be over $1 billion since he turned professional, are in the system somewhere generating economic activity which creates jobs which, you guessed it, feeds the hungry.

So take a pill, folks, and enjoy the tournament.

I wonder if we could entice him to come to Regina Beach, hehe.

Here's a little of the real Obama

I gotta be honest, I'm pretty tired of everyone bashing the incumbent president. God knows we had 8 years of Bush bashing and I'd like to have a break from all this negative stuff for a while. But I just checked out Obama's comments today about the Ft. Hood shootings. His comments last about 2 minutes and 35 seconds.

The first time I viewed the video things seemed to be going OK and then he starts repeating himself and saying 'ahh' a lot and basically not making a lot of sense. So I look at it again and, sure enough, the first minute and 45 seconds (I hovered over the progress bar to get the time) he's reading from some prepared notes and then, like a shot, you can tell when he gets to the end of his notes and decides to add a few closing remarks off the top of his head. He still glances down occasionally but it's likely just out of habit because its obvious he's putting his own sentences together. The result is dumbfounding.

And I don't mean this in a partisan way. I think one of the greatest speakers off-the-cuff I've ever seen is Bill Clinton. Heck, I can't think of anybody as bad as Obama. George W. had his has gaffs, for sure, but this is way out there. As far as thinking on your feet, Palin, for God sake, puts Obama to shame, and that's saying something.

Check it out for yourself.

I wish I was a better writer . . .

Man, there are a lot of good writers out there. Makes me wonder what I'm doing here.

One of my favourite writers is Roger Ebert. It helps that I usually agree with his movie reviews.

Attaining Eberts's writing ability is beyond my reach but what intimidates me are the Joe Blows who contribute to his blog. I'd be happy to be able to write like some of them. Check out this entry, reproduced below, by CanInDeed on September 25, 2009 3:03 PM.

And I like Ebert's response at the bottom . . .

CanInDeed writes:

Homer the Philosopher,

Tuesday

11:15 am : One should not end one’s life prematurely, for life is like a really bad movie, and ending it is like walking out before one knows its ending. [note to self, revise: of course we know the ending, we die.] This is the wisest thing I’ve said all day, but I woke up at 11:00 am, so things might improve.

2:15 pm : Still sitting at table, thinking.

4:10 pm : Took my weekly shower. The soap smelled like roses. Always stop and smell the roses. That sounds familiar, possible plagarism.

5:55 pm : Had epiphany: Life is like a box of crayons, if your parents buy you the really small box, you know you’re screwed from the outset. [note to self, revise: this has to tie in somehow with life-affirming stuff.]

7:25 pm : Uh, well, life is . . . Lost my train of thought.

9:30 pm : Regained my train of thought. The idea sucked.

11:15 pm : [note to self, don’t give up the day job.]

Wednesday

2:15 am : Just realized I don’t have day job.

3:15 am : Just heard the rat trap snap. Now where’s that cookbook?

1:30 pm : Slept late after my first decent meal in days.

3:45 pm : Getting bored. Must go for monthly walk around the block.

4:00 pm : Back from walk. Exhausted

6:66 pm : Just realized there is no 6:66 pm

8:10 pm : You talkin’ to me, ‘cause I don’t see anybody else in this room.

9:00 pm : Answered rap on door. Someone left a box of puppies. Now where’s that cookbook?

11:30 pm : Just shared a nice meal with the puppies. Thank God for dumpsters.

12:00 am : A new day begins. Smile. Life is like a box of puppies, you never know when things are going to get better, just that they will.

Ebert: Nothing eventful happened Thursday?

So you're saying there's a chance . . .

You think Lloyd Christmas had some long odds? Wait till you hear this . . .

No doubt you've heard the scientific theory about how life began on Earth? Supposedly a long time ago in a warm pond a chance alignment of amino acids created the first primitive bacteria.

Well I'm hear to tell you that there's trouble in Evolution City. We evolved, for sure. The fossil record is there for all to see, but how life began and subsequently evolved is being looked at in a whole new light these days.

In May of 2001 Chandra Wickamasinghe and Fred Hoyle co-authored an article on the Action Science website entitled Evolution of Life: A Cosmic Perspective. As an introduction to the problems being encountered by evolution theory, I want to highlight section 12 of that article where the authors calculated the odds of amino acid molecules randomly lining up to form that first primitive bacteria. The odds are 1 in 10^500,000! Those are unimaginably low odds. Forget about Lloyd Christmas. If ever there was absolutely no chance of something happening, this is it.

Now Lloyd wouldn't give up that easy so we won't either. Let's have a look at just how long these odds are. After all, there could be trillions upon trillions of amino acids molecules, in billions and billions of ponds all over the Earth. The odds are long, yes, but over many many years, couldn't it still happen?

Nope, nadda, forget it . . . and I'll do a little example to help you (and Lloyd) see the light:

Assumption 1: let's suppose that the entire Earth's surface is covered in a 100km deep warm pool of amino acid molecules,

Assumption 2: let's take a guess that there are 100 trillion amino acid molecules in each millilitre of liquid (I actually have no idea how many would fit in a millilitre but that should be enough for our purposes),

Assumption 3: the amino acid molecules will be moving around in this warm liquid providing numerous opportunities for just the right alignment to occur. So lets say for each 600,000 amino acid molecule (the approximate number needed for a simple bacteria) they will move into a new position, or 'give it the old college try', about 1 million times a second (again I have no idea how fast these little things move but that should suffice).

Assumption 4: how about we let this soup steep for 50 billion years which is 10 times the approximate age of the Earth.

So what's the odds of this example producing a simple bacteria? The number of 'tries' is about 10⁵³ (I won't bore you with the math). Because of the large difference in magnitude between 10^500,000 and 10⁵³, the resulting odds can be approximated as the ratio of the two yielding 1 in 10^500,000/10⁵³ = 1 in 10^499,947!

Sorry Lloyd, but all those tries don't have any meaningful impact on those long odds.

So if a chance alignment of amino acid molecules is not possible then how did life start and evolve on Earth? I'm putting my money on a theory called Cosmic Ancestry. Cosmic Ancestry states that the genetic material needed for life was already present in the materials that formed Earth and that this material was the source of the beginings of life on Earth. It also states that evolution was driven by this original material as well as continual genetic seeding from microbes carried to Earth by comets. There's a lot of research going on right now to test this theory and the evidence is steadily mounting. Indeed, the theory maintains that this process continues today.

Cosmic Ancestry . . . it's got a nice ring to it doesn't it.

I'll have a lot more to say about this in the days to come.

Cheers.

What does 'black' mean?

Can someone tell me what the term 'black' means. Is this an anthropological term? If so, what does it mean anthropologically?

Obama, who, up to this point, is my most written-about subject, is called America's first black president. Using information from Wikipedia's main entry on Obama; his mother was of mainly English descent, which presumably would mean she was Caucasoid (I'm using anthropology terms here), and his father was Kenyan, which presumably means he was Negroid. Now keep in mind ethnic origin does not at all guarantee racial origin so if anyone has further information about the racial origin of Obama's parents please speak up. (Obama apparently writes a lot about race in his books so if you have copies of any, you could help out here.)

So in today's vernacular, using the above assumptions, Obama is half white. So why is he referred to as 'black'. Wouldn't a more apt description be mixed race or half black and half white?

Another perplexing example is Tiger Woods. He is often referred to as black. In the words of Wikipedia he is 'one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter African American, one-eighth Native American, and one-eighth Dutch'. Again, ethnic origin does not guaratee racial origin so if you have any further racial info about Tiger, please speak up. But using his ethnic origins as a basis, his racial makeup is presumably five-eighth's Mongoloid (that's the Thai, Chinese, and Native American), one-quarter Negroid (African American), and one-eighth Caucasoid (Dutch).

Or in other words, Tiger is one-quarter black. So why do some people call him 'black'.

I believe the currently accepted word for Mongoloid is 'brown'. Since he has more than twice as much brown in him than any other race, why don't people call him 'brown'? Personally I prefer not to call people any colour. To me, Tiger is just Tiger, and he's AWESOME!! But his awesomeness is a topic for another day.

Tiger's wife is Swedish and she certainly appears to be mostly Caucasoid. If so, this would make Tiger's kids one-eighth black. I'm wondering if anyone will refer to them as 'black'.

Why do I care about this? I look forward to the day that a person's colour, that is, their race, is irrelevant, period. We are getting there. I hear less and less references to Tiger being black. He's just Tiger, one of the most amazing people on the planet. And to his credit, I think he has had a hand in that. He never seems to grind the axe on race and it's good on him. Instead he puts his money where is mouth is with the Tiger Woods Foundation and helps countless underpriviledged kids . . . of all races.

Now, ethnicity is fine. I'm proud of my ethnic background as most people are. And the richness of ethnic cultures around the world justs adds to our collective charm. But race? It has no place.

Race has no place. That's my motto for the day.

Cheers.

"Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words . . . "

Today, Barack Obama won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize . . . for his words. I've been reading some of the objections to his win. One overwhelming sentiment is that all he has done, in his short 8 months in office, is make three speeches; one in Germany, one in Cairo, and one at the United Nations.

My belief is that our political leaders have very little direct power, either domestically or internationally. Their power lies in their ability to convince people to think the way they think. How do they do this? If they are good at making speeches, as Obama is, then that would be a very good method.

I can think of a few people who used public speaking to advance their agenda; Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King's 'I have a Dream' speech, JFK's inaugural address where he says 'Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country'. Even Ronald Regan's 'Gorbechev teared down this wall' speech.

It's a pitty that 'the great communicator' fumbled that line but what he did to inspire and influence not only his friends but his enemies is a matter of record.

By the way, how come Ronald Regan didn't win the Nobel Peace Prize but two notoriously unsuccessful democratic leaders did. I'm thinking of Jimmy Carter, and that idiot who claimed he invented the internet. What was his name? Oh, right, Al Gore. Ronald Regan's contributions to tearing down the Iron Curtain make Carter and Gore's accomplishments, in comparison, laughably insignificant. But I digress.

Can a president win the Nobel Peace Prize by making three speeches? Sure. Our former Canadian Prime Minister, Lester B. Pearson, did it with one; to the UN.

I haven't listened to Obama's three speeches but I'm going to check them out and see if I agree with the Nobel Prize committee. (Do speeches count when you use a teleprompter? Just kidding.)

Obama's speech in Germany

Obama's speech in Cairo

Obama's speech to the UN

Hello world

Thought I'd try some blogging. I like writing and sometimes think I have something to say.

We'll see . . .