If only there were a network of computers
hosting all of mankind’s knowledge.
Oh, wait, there is such a network, now. We even have access to it with convenient handheld devices, an innovation that has permanently ruined the sport of bar bets.
If only those computers didn’t also host
so much nonsense.
Wait, what? You mean that you can’t count on the accuracy of what you find online? Say it isn’t so.
At about the 15-minute mark, the sensible thing would have been to go home and try again later, but by then perverse curiosity was calling the shots.
Can this
get any stupider?
In this case, *this* was us trying to cast a vote in the first hour of the first day of the Advance Poll in our local community centre. You know, before they got busy. As it turned out, a few others in our neighbourhood had the same idea: There were unexpectedly high numbers of Advance voters, especially for one polling station among the 5 or 6 that our centre was serving. Our polling station, as it turned out.
Was *this* a finely tuned system being overwhelmed by too many pesky voters? Not so much. Let’s look at the things that went wrong.
If you were at all inclined to think about it, you might think that highway rest stops would have long since settled on the optimal design for metal doors on toilet stalls, considering durability, cost, ease of installation, and ease of maintenance. Likewise and even more so for the hinges on metal bathroom doors, yeah? Who wants to prematurely/frequently replace hinges with moving parts, subject as they are to being mishandled by people who don’t directly pay for their replacement? Moreover, especially in the context of a public toilet, who wants to clean any extraneous edges? The benefits of standardization would seem to be high, and yet it has not happened.
Well, one last time for this year, anyway. On Monday, we headed south to Huntington Beach State Park in a mood to appreciate pretty much whatever we got, and the cashier at the entry kiosk got ahead of us, thanking us, as Canadians, for coming south. Who needs cardio? It’s good for the heart both to appreciate and to be appreciated.
In our turn, we appreciated the egrets (great and snowy) scattered across the estuary, lifting off in concert in response to nothing obvious to me and then settling back down, usually at the just-a-white-blob distance. There were only a few near enough for photos.
This guy was lurking verrry slowly at the shore line, before putting his head under water five times very quickly.
Over the years we’ve spent several months of March in Myrtle Beach, which is when the rhododendrons bloom. Or do they? Although I fully expected to see bushes covered in pink flowers when we arrived a little more than three weeks ago, the bushes below our balcony were green and stayed stubbornly so.
But a week can make a difference. Even what-a-difference.
How it started (Mar 23) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . How it’s going (Mar 30)
Last week we had pollen. This week we have yellow traffic lights in a yellow school bus’s windows. Will we get the three-peat? That is, a continuation of the entirely coincidental and totally meaningless week-over-week examples of things yellow? Will we find a yellow face? On a bird? IN A REFLECTION?
Likely not, but stay tuned.
Standing outside the tub, I turn the water on. I adjust the single-lever faucet off dead centre. I wait for hot/cold feedback. I adjust again. I wait again. I realize I will have to wait an unknown period since this is the first time using this shower and its sensitivity to adjustment is likewise unknown.
I finally determine the macro faucet placement to produce hot water, not cold. I adjust the micro placement to produce tolerably hot water, not scalding. I wait for tolerable/scalding feedback. I adjust again. I wait again.
I determine that the feedback delay and/or responsiveness likely exceed my patience, so I will have to settle for close enough. I pull up the shower diverter valve.
Ack!
Spend enough time being photographed and you learn to ignore the cameras. Movie actors, of course, must seem to ignore them when working, but professional golfers must really ignore them, even as every swing and facial expression is captured and transmitted to the watching crowds. The same applies to professional curlers, although the crowds are smaller.
Large birds that frequent accessible swamps and estuaries must be made of the same impervious stuff as professional athletes. If I move slowly, stand back, and let the zoom do the work, these birds often reward me by ignoring my presence. In this busy state park, have they learned to ignore people with cameras? Maybe. People in general? More likely.
It’s yellow. It’s fine. It’s everywhere, most obviously on dark cars and on windshields.
But it really is everywhere. It’s on white plastic handrails, hard to see but obvious to the touch.
It’s ground into wooden stairs.
It’s piled up in tiny drifts along the ridges of a metal threshold.
It catches on any surface irregularities in concrete sidewalks and asphalt roads.
It forms a scummy layer on still bodies of water.
It’s throughout my breathing apparatus, coating my bronchial passages and the inside of my nose. No photos available, you’ll be glad to know.
*It* is pine pollen and the experts on allergies say that it is not responsible for the coughing and sneezing that enliven spring in Myrtle Beach, notwithstanding what the locals say. Pine pollen, it turns out, is too big to trigger true allergic reactions: that requires smaller particles.
Pine pollen grains can be 60 to 100 micrometers in diameter.
Pine pollen is large compared to other pollen grains
(typical pollen grain size is approximately 10 micrometers).
– The Asthma Center
Are you finding 60 to 100 micrometers hard to visualize, or is it just me?
We’re not making a watch or an electronic microscope here, so for our purposes it’s close enough to say that an individual pine-pollen grain is about the thickness of a human hair, or about twice the size of the smallest thing we can see.
The experts are admirably non-judgmental about pollen, even philosophical.
Pollen is the male part of a plant’s life.
It isn’t good or bad.
It’s just there, in great volume, in the spring.Pollen is a part of life.
It’s the trees’ investment in the future.
It also clearly shows that spring is here.
Smile as you sneeze — life is good.
In case you want to make your own investment in the future, consider this: Just being seen can be enough to attract all the blame.
Posted: 2025 Apr 19
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
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