They all look the same to me anyway....

So the announcement by the USFDA that there will be no restrictions or required notifications on cloned meat and milk, has some people north of the border asking questions about what Canada's stance will be on cloned animal products.

Some have suggested that Canada would be wise to require labelling, simply to distinguish itself from US products for people who might not want to eat cloned meat. We really do have an aversion to anything that we don't imagine is naturally made, don't we? Considering how many of the things we use and consume in our lives that have been touched by some kind of technology, some kind of invention that humans have dreamed up to make our lives better, it really is surprising the reluctance we have - as a group - to accept things that have been modified by technology, particularly when those things are animals or human beings. We have less fear of robots than genetically modified humans, less fear of gadgets than we do of cloned animals. No wonder many cultures have had a fear of twins.

Of course as far as I'm concerned, I would eat cloned or non-cloned food - most of it would depend on whether it was on sale or not! I don't even have a problem with GMOs (genetically modified organisms), at least not in theory. I do have a problem with the economics of genetically engineering foodstuffs, like monoculture, patenting and the kind of extortion that a company like Monsanto can get away with.

Some observers have noted that cloning is still so expensive that it is unlikely it will be used for mass production of meat products. Cloning may be used as a breeding tool - to ensure the continuation of genetically superior breeding stock - but it is unlikely that we'll be eating cloned meat anytime soon.

For me, taste and cost are the primary driving factors in my food purchasing decisions, not where the food originated from. As long as the animal is healthy, I really don't care how similar it might be to any other one.

White Christmas... almost

Today, the day after all the festivities, the very relaxing and enjoyable holidays during which I did nothing, it now snows.

But I don't mind. I've never really felt like I needed to have a White Christmas to make it a real holiday. I've also never really felt the need to have turkey at Christmas (though this year I did courtesy of my sister).

Actually, no snow over Christmas was actually pretty nice. It was easy to get around and was warm enough that it wasn't a chore to travel. I like that.

Today, the day that I need to get back to work, it snows. Several centimeters. It seems appropriate that the day back to work is the one where it snows, doesn't it? It also feels really nice to have done pretty much nothing at all for the last two days.

Happy Winter everyone!

(clicking on the photo will show you a satellite image of how the earth changes with the seasons)

Tis the season

Ahhh... the joys of gift shopping... I'm very glad I finished last week.

I've been reading several articles in the paper and online about how popular gift cards are this year. And how they're such a great idea. And how they make your gift shopping so easy.

And I suppose they are an easy gift to buy. You don't have to search for the right size or color, or second guess whether they'll like the gift.

But for a shop-a-phobic like me, the gift card is usually not the gift that I get most excited about. I've received a few gift cards before - some of them have been appreciated because they were places where I regularly shop anyway and it was great to be able to go and pick out something I wanted. I've gotten other gift cards that sit in my wallet for months before I'd find the time to go to that particular store, and then sometimes it took a while to find something I actually wanted there.

The downside is, for someone like me, the time you save shopping for my gift just gets passed off on me. Giving a gift card that you don't know the person will love and use, just puts the burden on the recipient to spend the time you saved.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no scrooge, and I'm not against gift cards per se, but all this talk about gift cards lately has just got me thinking about them. They're fabulous for giving experiences - a trip to the movies, a day on a ski hill, an outing to the local amusement center - and sometimes you just know it's right (like if you gave me a card for amazon or chapters...) But I still like getting actual things.

After all, just imagine a Christmans morning just full of gift cards. A tree stacked with nothing but gift cards just isn't as much fun on the morning of the 25th.

Those Canadians and their computers!

Actually, it's those Canadians and their blogs. Apparently, per internet-capita, Canadians read more blogs than any other country*

Two point touch theorizes that is has something to do with the trust and level of establishment of IT press (with the US having a well trusted print IT press, which is why it ranks lowest):

The equation then becomes that penetration of blogs is in inverse proportion to the trust and penetration of mainstream print media. Common sense, I guess.

But a commenter takes the cultural approach:

To be fair, TheGoodBlogs statistics may not be truly representative of what’s out there since our sample is still relatively small. However for what it’s worth, in terms of absolute visits, US (64%), Canada (18.5%), UK (4.88%), Germany (1.94%), France (1.75%), Australia (1.46%), India (1%) and the rest is less than 1%.

What does seem to correlate though is if I apply the absolute numbers against the number of internet users per country (obtained on www.internetworldstats.com), it shows me that Canadians with Internet access is almost 2.5 times more likely to visit blogs than their US counterparts. I found nothing to that substantiate the other countries like Spain etc.

Anecdotally, (tongue-in-cheek of course) I think it means that the US have better alternative channels of entertainment like better cable and satellite TV, more online shopping opportunities, better shopping malls and recreational distractions than us poor sods up north! We rely on keeping each other company online when we’re snowed in and frequent blogs in the hope that someone will be our friend!

I tend to think the commenter is closer to the mark, simply because I don't know whether the US has a more well trusted IT press than Canada. The argument does shift during the post from theorizing about IT press to mainstream press, which I would imagine are worlds apart. At least when it comes to mainstream press in the US (which I have more experience with than the IT press). But it's an interesting piece of trivia.

*The countries included in the analysis are: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the UK and the US

Much better

My earlier post trying to share the presentation I made wasn't working - Geocities kept rerouting you to a different page than the one I asked it to send you to - so here it is in all its glory (or not!)

No pulse?

Usually when we say someone has no pulse, we're using figurative language to indicate an individual who is unemotional, or reluctant to express any passionate emotion, but I would imagine that this man, who literally doesn't have a heart beat is actually pretty excited about his new heart.

Happy anniversary

As I was running today, it occured to me that right about this time (well, maybe November) is my tenth year running anniversary. Hooray for me! Since the traditional tenth anniversary gift is a tin or aluminum item, I guess I won't be buying anything to celebrate it... after all, metal and running don't really seem to go together, do they?

I had quit smoking earlier in the year - which means this year is the tenth anniversary of that event too - and I was putting on the pounds. It wasn't pretty and I figured that I was getting old enough that my regimen of eating whatever I wanted and sitting around wasn't going to work anymore. I had to actually do something now to maintain my weight.

I remember my first run. It was about 300m and by the end of it, my lungs were on fire and I felt like throwing up. Yeah, I was in horrible shape. But despite that horrendous first attempt, I went back the next day. This time I stopped at 250m and the burning wasn't quite so terrible. I gradually began working my way up the distance, usually trying for a continuous run rather than the walk-run-walk-run that they usually recommend for beginners. (Part of this was because I didn't know of this wisdom, and part of it was because it felt like cheating to me to walk part of the time.)

But the thing I kept thinking about as I was running today was that ten years is an awfully long time and I really haven't done anything worth writing about during that time. Sure, the first time I ran a 10k (took me over an hour!) I was pretty proud of myself, and I've run more than one of them, but I really haven't gone the distance, so to speak. I'm not talking marathon here - I don't know that I could manage one of those - but something that stretches me a bit more might be a good idea.


Thing is, I've tried to increase my distance and frequency at various times before. And I find I can't do it. It's not so much the time it takes to do so many runs, though they do require a significant commitment, but it's the exhaustion. When I try to run farther or faster, trying to build up to something more than my 2-3 runs a week, I end up so tired that I spend more time sleeping. And even when I'm awake, I find I'm exhausted enough that I can have difficulty concentrating. Concentration is not something I can give up. I can't afford it.

So I feel stuck at this level of exercise. I still enjoy it, and I notice that if I don't go running for a while I start to feel out of sorts, but I'd like to take on a new, longer challege - maybe a half marathon - without disrupting the rest of my life. Problem is, I don't know that I can accomplish that.

So I feel good that I've been running this long and am still enjoying it, even though I feel like I could be doing more. Guess I'll just have to be happy with that.

Customer Service... I do not think that word means what you think it means...

Two stories of customer service - one good, one bad. Which one do you want first? The good one? Too bad, it's my blog. You get the rant first.

Last week, I spent a rather frustrating several minutes on the phone with my cell phone company (at least calls to them don't run up my minutes). I was requesting - for the third time - a copy of my first two bills on the account.

We signed up for the service at the beginning of September, and got a rather annoyed call at the beginning of October from the company asking why we hadn't paid our bill. We responded that we hadn't received one, paid the amount requested, and confirmed our mailing address with them (they'd written it down wrong).

The next month, we again had an annoyed call asking us why we hadn't paid our bill. Now we were annoyed as well and told them that yet again we had not received our bill and could they please send it.

Then at the end of October, I spent several minutes on the phone convincing someone that I had never received my bills for the previous months and they needed to send them. The lackey on the other end acted like he was doing me a favor by not charging me the $8 "bill reprint" fee. He did however do me the favor of at least telling me what my account number was, so I could sign up for online billing. (I would've known my account number and signed up for online billing in September if they had ever seen fit to send me my bill.) Now the power over the bills was at least in my hands though it wasn't retroactive.

Last week when I called, the second lackey I talked to told me the post office must have lost my bills and he would send new ones out but charge me the $8. Now $8 ain't much - good cup of coffee and a biscotti - but I hadn't been the one screwing up here - it was either the cell company or the post office - and I didn't think it was right that I should pay for someone else's mistake. He argued. I lost it and cussed. Then I asked for his supervisor. He finally told me I wouldn't be charged for the additional bill.

Who in the world authorizes staff to argue with a customer over $8? Especially when I've got four phones I'm paying for. What kind of customer service mentality is this? It's not like the $8 was gonna come out of the lackey's pocket! And even though I'm not paying for it, I'm unimpressed with this service provider and am seriously considering switching after only a few months. Was it worth it to them to lose a customer? Especially one with a blog? You notice I haven't mentioned who it is, but if they pull another one like this, you bet their name will be emblazoned across a post!

The good one? My hubby ordered an item off ebay. When it arrived, it was the wrong version. He emailed the seller. She looked at it and said, yep, oops, that was my bad. I posted the wrong version.

THEN. She went out, BOUGHT the version she'd promised, is sending it to him, WITH a SASE to send the wrong one back!

Now THAT's excellent customer service! My cell phone provider could learn a thing or two from her.

Learning then teaching

I've been learning a new software program for work, and I figured the best way to figure out all its features was to create something with it. It's a multimedia program that allows you to produce video clips, utilizing camera input, sound recording, images, and existing sound clips.

So I created a brief clip about the thing I think most about these days: cyborgs. It's a brief intro to the term and some of its common uses. Perhaps someday it might be actually be useful to my teaching.

If you want to see it, click here. It will download to a temporary file on your computer - so if you don't want it to do that, don't click, but if you do download it, it will run on RealPlayer or Windows Media Player.

I had a lot of fun putting together. Hope you enjoy!

Finally moved in?

I've decided that acquiring, and cooking our first meal on a barbecue constitutes "all moved in"... and boy! was that a great tasting steak!

I like grilling a lot, so finally buying a barbecue - half price! who says it's crazy to buy summer equipment in December? - is the end to a quest that began the week we got here. It's not the exact same model as the one we'd first eyeballed, but it's got all the same features. And did I mention it was half price?

It cooks like a dream! People who have been to my house in real life and had barbecue anytime in the last several years may have noted the flame-like nature of our old barbecue. Not this one! Even in winter weather - chinook weather, mind you, but winter nonetheless - it produced a nice even heat that cooked everything just perfectly. And it's got one of those cool side burners for a frying pan or a pot as well!

Helps being in cattle country too - the steaks were an outrageously low price because we bought bulk and the quality was fabulous. Shout out to my sister for telling me about the place. I love it!

Steaks cooked on our new grill + beer I brewed myself. That was an awesome meal!

Valley of no left turns

Been away from the blogsphere for the last few days because I've been spending less time in front of my computer. Went out to a mountain resort over the weekend, which was fabulous! We had no schedule, no agenda, no kids, no email. Nothing but beautiful scenery, fresh air, hot springs and good food.

I needed that!

The valley we travelled through to get there - the valley of no left turns - is the only place I had previously seen a moose. Shortly after telling everyone in the car that, we saw one! Which was kinda cool.

Coming back meant there was lots of work to do that had piled up while I was enjoying myself instead of working, so I've just been trying to whittle down the to do list. Sometimes it feels like it will never go away. Losing our internet connection yesterday didn't help and it took almost two hours just to get ahold of someone at the company who could tell me what was going on!

Why is it that the good times are inevitably followed by the bad?