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These questions came up, which I thought interesting enough: 1. ICBM's* fly at a peak altitude of about 1200km - triple that of the ISS, and about 100x that of a 747. 2. About 60% of Canadians have passports. (USA = 50%; Europe = 40%). 3. Passports only became a thing in 1914 (WW1). Before that, one could more or less cross borders freely. 4. Anyone can sell legal "information", but only licenced lawyers can sell legal "advice". There are a few situations where even non-lawyers can sell advice, such as, immigration consultants. * ICBM's are the things that deliver nuclear warheads; a single missile carries between 3 and 15 warheads, each of which can be dropped over a different target, so a single missile could feasibly wipe out Canada.

I just NETFILE'd my 2025 return for the first time today (April 24) and their web portal correctly notes that it has been filed and is already in status 'ASSESSED'. But it seems they also time-travelled 10 days into the future to do so! I knew those guys had a lot of pull, but they can even bend the laws of physics! I am a big believer in using CRA's version of the T-slips and cross-checking it to the ones I got directly, but this year set a new low for reliability of the former: three slips that CRA got, I never did (and I am sure enough that they are legit that I accepted CRA's version); two others were divided it differently, eg TD Bank sent me a single T3 that CRA reported as divided into 3 separate T3's. Very odd. --- But once again it highlights the inanity of this "the banks tell us you made, you tell us how much you made, and then we compare the two versions" system (as opposed to "the banks tell us what you earned and we do everything els...

During our 16h flight to Sydney, I, on an impulse, signed up for ShortForm: The idea is, for $25/month, they provide short (a few pages) summaries of much longer books, eg for busy people. I read a couple and the quality seemed OK. In theory this seems like the BEST IDEA EVER. In practice, I just cancelled it, mostly because, since that flight, I hadn't opened it once. While I like the idea, I also have a huge backlog of "proper books" that I really want to work through (though there is ZERO chance I will read more than 1/3 of so of them before I die, and even at that, I will have to become a hugely faster reader). Also, this may not be fair, but I got the impression that ShortForm was mostly books I hadn't heard of, probably fine books, but I am somewhat more focussed on books that are either "famous" (I have a long mental list of even more books that I read in the past and want to re-read) or someone in particular recommended them. ---- For the time being,...

A r/showerthought from today. I did NOT post it, but I agree!

It's down to 12 days until the YVR marathon. I did a full 42.2k training run last Friday, and while it will never not be a grind, it wasn't hugely difficult, and, it was far more uphill (to the Seymour Dam) than the real one will be. It follows the exact same course as last year - QE Park, UBC, Burrard Bridge, Stanley Park. The motivationally significant 10k points are St Georges, Spanish Banks, and the north end of the Burrard Bridge. I'm feeling anxious, but not nearly as much as last year. Two weeks later, I'm going to Calgary for their marathon; this is my little challenge for 2026: to try to do 2 in the same month. I'm flying in on Saturday morning and will pretty much go straight to the airport afterwards for a 5pm flight home. The course looks pretty flat and almost entirely along the Bow River, but it's hard to say for sure. They probably have to have a least one hill to be a Boston qualifier (though I'm not sure if they are). Their registration is n...

Whilst on holidays I finally bought an issue of the New Yorker (it's hard to find in newsstands) as well as the Guardian Weekly. I also was catching up on The Atlantic, so, I had a chance to (very unsystematically) compare all of them. Summary: 1. Guardian Weekly seems significantly (maybe 30%) shorter than The Economist and quite a bit less opinionated. As the Economist, for all its qualities, tends to be quite repetitive as well as overly detailed (I want to know who is blocking Hormuz today and how likely that is to provoke a confrontation with China; I don't need to know exactly who said what when). (Disclosure: my BIL reads The Guardian and it's possible that I have an unconscious positive bias towards it, for that reason. My BIL is to current events knowledge as Elon Musk is to money). 2. New Yorker had a few stories that were lovely - airport lounges, Scottish stonehenge, and bereft remote communities in Greenland come to mind. They are much less current events relat...

 This month's Mastercard bill was so huge that they had to use a full-size envelope. AUS/NZ discourage cash even more than we do - it was common to see signs that cash would not be accepted, hard stop. On the other hand, as I mentioned, they apply a surcharge to credit cards, which, IMO, is absolutely the correct thing and we should do it too. --- Anyway, we're back home. We finally found sustained heat in Fiji; actually, it was quite cloudy, but, that was a good thing because it was so incredibly hot in the full sun; the clouds brought it down to a very pleasant level. If you're looking for a sun-resort do-nothing escape, I would 100% recommend Mexico over Fiji as it's closer and cheaper. But as a stopover from down under, Fiji was awesome. The day prior to our NZ-Fiji flight, there was a cyclone that caused all flights to be cancelled. Ours was delayed 4 hours, but with that minor exception - no flight issues at all and actually return flight was quite pleasant - we b...

Fingers crossed, we're at CHC airport awaiting a flight to Auckland and onward to Nadi, Fiji. Yesterday's flight to Fiji was cancelled (as were most of them) due to a cyclone passing through. Between weather worries and the small but non-zero possibility that Donald Trump is going to launch a nuclear attack today, it seems like it could be a difficult day. But chances are, it will work out, at least for us. --- Just for fun, here's my prediction: Trump won't nuke Iran, and "all" he is talking about is bombing their civilian infrastructure. I further predict that: he is eventually going to win this, and will be able to crow about having eliminated a horrible regime (true) that was headed to getting nukes of their own (also true). I like making predictions like this, because it's win-win. If I'm wrong and he falls flat on his face, it will be fun to watch him squirm and, there is just that tiny chance that this will be the thing that finally takes HIM do...

This is an incredible movie. You should see it! Shout-out to the teenage version of the main character. They both did a great job.  Believe it or not, I tend to tear up in movies, way more than my spouse does. But usually it only happens once or twice. This movie, like, 10 times.

It was chilly last night and on the spur of the moment, as we passed a theatre, we decided to go to a movie here in Dunedin NZ. (There are no interesting differences between NZ and CA movie theatres). We went to see "Project Hail Mary". This is YET ANOTHER example of a truly awful science fiction movie, although, nowhere near as awful as Ad Astra or Mission to Mars. I can't quite decide if it was worse than Interstellar. Anyway, what really distinguished this movie - apart from a really weird combination of 5 year old humour, half-decent science fiction, mostly great visuals, a sappy friendship story, and a truly phoned-in alien ... uh, costume? ... was it's LENGTH. It just went ON and ON and ON and ON. Started at 5:45 and I looked at my watch when the closing credits finally rolled: 8:30 !!!! WTF WTF WTF It's a total mystery to me how this complete joke of a movie got good reviews from Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and even The Guardian !! It might have been OK as a mov...

Seriously, I think this is a great idea, and as far as I know, nobody has proposed or tried it. The government should mount an anti-phone addiction campaign , similar in concept to the (I think successful) campaigns that it has executed against: - smoking - drinking and driving - distracted driving Things like: commercials, posters and such. Maybe some tax and other commercial disincentives against social media companies. Seriously, I can't think of any downsides to this idea, other than it might not work and therefore be a small waste of money. It seems like a risk well worth taking. --- I am so increasingly perturbed by this problem that I was musing about how or if I could get rid of my phone. My only real non-guilt inducing phone uses are a) Strava (could replace with a GPS watch), b) Spotify (could replace with a Spotify player, yup they exist c) WhatsApp (could just use it on my Macbook only, as I often do anyway). The problem is that a GPS watch + Spotify player would cost a...

During boring parts of driving I quizzed ChatGPT about FN relations in NZ vs CA. The more I think about this topic, the more interesting it is. I did not attempt to verify any of what ChatGPT says; for something like this, my feeling is it's reliable enough. This is what I understood: 1. In both countries, FN still have lots of social problems and such, way above, proportionally, the non-FN population; it's hard to say that either country is ahead in this aspect. 2. NZ signed a single super-important treaty a while back and have made many cash payments. By contrast, CA treaties have been piecemeal. 3. NZ and CA both have made cash payments. CA has also "granted" (returned?) territory and a degree of self-government; NZ has neither (eg. there is no concept of a "FN reserve" in NZ). 4. Instead, NZ is much more oriented towards shared management treaties and agreements, eg. a given chunk of land might be NZ, period, but, managed under an agreement giving both N...

We're back on the east coast of NZ. We basically crossed the width of the island (which, by the way, is 5x bigger than Vancouver Island) today. From what we saw: West coast of NZ: beautiful in a big-mountain and ocean way. The star attraction, Milford Sound, is a bit smaller than Indian Arm but an order of magnitude more spectacular which sheer cliffs, zillions of small waterfalls, and much taller and overall more spectacular terrain. We had a great guide in Milford with whom we spent the day (along with 11 others - UK, NZ and Saskatchewan). TBH though, the whole day would have been better had it been clear blue sky - it stopped raining, but it was foggy and COLD+++. Central and east coast of NZ: beautiful in a rolling-hills and green (and sheep/cattle) everywhere sort of a way. It helped that it was mostly clear. We have 2 more nights here in NZ, but the second of those will be right by CHC airport so as to catch an earlyish flight to Fiji (3 hours away and directly north, about a...

So far behind in blogging! Just a quick note. We're in Queenstown, which is more or less in the south-centre of the island, the jumping off point for Milford Sound, which is our destination and probably the most famous touristy site in NZ. On the way we stopped in Lake Tekapo (gorgeous) and Wanaka (unspeakably gorgeous). Both Okanagan like, except much more impressive mountains. A cross between Kelowna and Lake Louise, perhaps. It's hard to beat Lake Louise ;) Weather over past 3 days has been A++++ (thank God) though the forecast is not great. Saturday we actually go to Milford Sound, then on Sunday will start the 700k trip back to Christchurch. Route TBA depending on the weather. -- Fun fact: the province of BC is about 3.5x bigger than the entire country of NZ. The population is about the same (5M). NZ-Australia have a deal where a citizen of one can freely live and work in the other. The famous Jacinda Ardern recently caught flack for having bought a house in Sydney. -- In ...