In just over an hour we North Americans are supposed to turn our clocks back an hour in the vain quest of pursuit of saving energy.

I say “vain pursuit” because although daylight saving time is promoted as leading to an overall reduction in energy consumption, there hasn’t been any proof that this has ever been accomplished. Check out David Prerau’s book Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time (hardcover: 1560256559; softcover: 1560257962) if you want to learn more about the history of daylight saving time. It’s actually more interesting than it sounds.

If you’re a *NIX system administrator you probably updated your systems a couple of years ago, but in case you haven’t you probably should take a look at this. The zdump command should give you something like this:

[gordon@seedling gordon]$ /usr/sbin/zdump -v /etc/localtime |grep 2011

/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 13 06:59:59 2011 UTC = Sun Mar 13 01:59:59 2011 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

/etc/localtime  Sun Mar 13 07:00:00 2011 UTC = Sun Mar 13 03:00:00 2011 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400

/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  6 05:59:59 2011 UTC = Sun Nov  6 01:59:59 2011 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400

/etc/localtime  Sun Nov  6 06:00:00 2011 UTC = Sun Nov  6 01:00:00 2011 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000

With the beautiful weather Friday in Ottawa, you can be forgiven if you forgot that today is the first day of Autumn. Hopefully it’s the first day of a nice long warm fall because I know I’m in absolutely no rush to move into the next season.

So, what makes it the first day of autumn anyway? (more…)

This photo is  of Nathan Phillips Square in Toronto, which is being covered in chalk as people express their tributes to the late Jack Layton. It’s one of several photos in a Flickr stream by Jackman Chiu.

A tip o’ the hat to Trashy for sending me a link to it.

According to a CBC story, the Conservative government is considering privatizing the search and rescue roles currently carried out by the Department of National Defence and the Coast Guard.

WTF??!!11!eleven?! If true, then this idea would have to go on the Top Ten Stupid Things The Conservative Government Has Thought Of list. (I’m not sure what would be bumped off the list… that’s for another day.)

Search and rescue requires highly trained, well-equiped people who can, if necessary, be ordered into harm’s way. The military and Coast Guard have both the highly-trained personnel and equipment necessary to undertake search and rescue missions, which often result in their going into very dangerous situations. No private company is going to be able to staff such a venture without recruiting the people from the military or Coast Guard. And even if they can find the people, what company would be willing to assume the incredible liabilities that come with running search and rescue missions?

And then there’s the cost. Flying airplanes and helicopters, running boats and having highly-trained personnel is a very expensive business. How would a private company pay for such a venture? Presumably they would have a contract from the government, but would it really cost less than the current situation? Doubtful, particularly if you take into consideration the fact that the SAR personnel are likely going to come from the military and Coast Guard meaning those organizations are going to have to replace some of the highly-trained personnel.

Search and rescue must remain a function and responsibility of the government. Privatization is not an option.

A tip o’ the hat to Trashy for blogging about it this morning.

As you may know, Sir John Franklin made several expeditions into the Canadian Arctic, the last of which saw him and his crew die of starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning (from their cans of food) and scurvy. The expedition’s ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were trapped in the ice off King William Island in September 1846. According to a note found on the island, Franklin died on June 11th, 1847, though the exact location of his grave remains unknown, something that Ron Carlson desperately wants to change.

So, when the Nunavut Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth (CLEY) rejected his application for an archaeological license to search for Franklin’s grave he was understandably frustrated. (more…)

So, like many people, I watched the 2011 election debate yesterday evening. Predictably, it was us-versus-them — or from Harper’s point of view them-versus-me — for much, but not all, of the debate.I think this would have been true regardless of who was Prime Minister because the opposition’s goal is to unseat the incumbent party in an election so they can afford to risk more.

At some point over the course of the two hours, each of the leaders made at least one good point, even the separtist leader, though what Harper’s “good point” was escapes me. His continued denial of the legitimacy of being found in contempt of Parliament continues to baffle me. He once again claimed that it really wasn’t legitimate and that it was just the other three parties ganging up on him.

I’m sorry, Mr. Harper, but the majority of elected representatives in the House of Commons found you and your government in contempt of Parliament. You may not like it, but that’s the way democracy is sometimes, particularly when you obfuscate and lie in the House.

There was some mud slinging, but not an excessive amount. Harper didn’t really get involved in that, but as the incumbent Prime Minister and being in a precarious position as a result of the contempt and the Auditor General’s report that says they lied to Parliament about the G8/G20 funds, among other things, he couldn’t afford to because it would be a guarantee no-win situation.

Prior to the debate, the gap between the Liberals and Conservatives had been steadily closing. Post-debate polls seem to suggest the gap has increased. Hopefully that’s just a blip and the previous trend continues because with all that has gone on while Harper has been in power I am baffled as to why people would support him. Why would someone want to continue to have a governing party that has repeatedly obfuscated and lied to Parliament, second guessed, gagged and fired commissioners for doing their job (Linda Keen who was fired when she put safety first at Chalk River and the CRTC are two that spring to mind), ignored facts when they inconveniently did not support their actions (building new prisons when the crime statistics don’t indicate a need), and generally turning Canada into another United States (more prisons, and  excessively expensive military jets (NB: I do not have a problem with equiping our military to do their job properly, but the cost of the F35s seems excessively high and not well understood.), to name a couple).

The Squid has an excellent blog post as to why a vote for someone other than the Liberals is effectively a vote for the Conservatives that I encourage you to read, regardless of your politics. I can understand why someone might want to vote NDP, Green or Bloc, but those votes will just end up being votes for the Conservatives. If you don’t want to see the Conservatives back in power, then vote Liberal. If you do want to see the Conservatives back in power, ask yourself why you’re supporting a government that was found in contempt of Parliament and has lied to Canadians.

I took advantage of the clear skies in Palm Beach to take some pictures of the moon earlier this evening.

The moon’s orbit is not perfectly circular. If it was then it would always be the same distance from the Earth and there wouldn’t be times when the low and high tides are lower and higher than usual.

This evening the moon is both a full moon and it’s within one hour of perigee, or the closest point in its orbit, which makes it a supermoon. According to NASA, it’s going to appear to be about 14% bigger and 30% brighter than when it’s at apogee (the farthest point in its orbit).

Very high tides accompany supermoons and this evening some nearby fishermen commented that the tides were higher than usual.