The Events page lists our monthly coffees and movies, dinners and social occasions. Thank you Rob for your excellent work. Readers can run their mouse over the indicated word on the Events page and – voila – our calendar appears.

The first question in our Puzzles section is difficult. No more Mr Nice Guy in this e-zine. The second is less of a challenge, but try it without pencil and paper.

Our Articles begin with a forthright examination of safety in the Gulf of Mexico. It appears that safety was deliberately flouted in the stampede for profit. And yet the blame can’t be leveled at any person or company. We’ve devised a system, call it a market economy, which places the individual and community behind money in importance. BP and Transocean share our values. They are doing what most of us do from day to day, trying to make a buck and taking chances.

Next is a study of why Johnny can’t read. You know the type of article we mean. They’ve appeared in scholarly journals and the popular press for decades. We dumb down education and then we’re surprised why graduates can’t perform the simplest task, let alone function at the cutting edge of science. Schools must become harder, not easier, if Johnny is to prosper. But we feel pity for poor Johnny. It’s not his fault that he can’t spell or read or think. And we wonder at the decay of standards. Or is all this a misconception caused by boomers grown belatedly cynical? You decide.

We look at oilsands pollution and the conspiracy of silence between government and industry. Whoa, we don’t mean overt and deliberate conspiracy. Rather we’re talking about the same needs that drive government regulators to rely on industry for information and expertise. We’re penny-pinchers, we taxpayers. We applaud when governments cut the civil service. Not enough people to draft regulations? No problem; the old regs will do till next year or the next. Not enough inspectors? Let the companies do the work and report to government offices that everything is under control. And when regulators find shoddy workmanship, we think they’re pettifogging purse-lipped idiots. We urge our leaders to ignore the experts. What competent scientist would want to work for our government in such circumstances? We get the inspection regime we deserve. Be reasonable, we say, let companies drill for oil and handle safety. Let exploitation of the oilsands proceed, until a crisis occurs or an accident, when we turn like wolves on our handlers and demand to know why we lack up-to-date procedures or why they weren’t implemented. No, it’s not the companies that are to blame. It’s ourselves.

As for the wealthy elite who manipulate the Republicans among our neighbours to the south, see our fourth feature. The tea party is more than a gathering of little guys in rebellion against the forces of evil. The hands that pull the strings belong to the richest in the nation. From which we can infer that it’s business as usual in the realm of politics. Aie de me!

The Events page lists our monthly coffees and movies, dinners and social occasions. Thank you Rob for your excellent work. Readers can run their mouse over the indicated word on the Events page and – voila – our calendar appears.

Visualization is the challenge in our Puzzles section. Don’t hesitate to stretch your skills.

The Articles begin with a French analysis of buck-passing in the BP disaster. I mean the PR disaster as well as the “black wave” as Paris expresses it. Would it surprise us to see titanic struggles in court one day, as BP sues Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron International? Other companies can’t wait to join the litigation nightmare to come. We’ve heard soft noises from BP thus far, but these are as the velvet glove that conceals an iron fist. Stay tuned, sports fans.

Next is a study of the cost-cutting and unreality that pervaded and financed BP’s growth. Prudence was not BP’s mission, caution not its practice. Near-misses and errors seem the rule. But BP still takes on projects that other companies view as too risky, and BP then tries to make the projects ever more profitable. The combination of increasing risk and decreasing caution is volatile. BP hasn’t learned. Or is it governments that never learn to moderate promises, or we voters who keep electing them and expecting the impossible?

We also see another article in the Why Johnny Can’t Read series, that now has stretched through a generation. Tests have become easier because of politicians who want to brag about scores and who make financing contingent on test results. Well, frankly, what else could a rational person expect? The focus here is on New York, which allows us to watch the Big Apple squirm as we feel superior. It can’t happen here, right?

The puzzles this month involve number theory. Give them a try.

Our articles start with an analysis of control on the Deepwater Horizon before the blowout. Was the well owner in charge, the rig owner, or the rig captain? The captain says everybody knew, but the facts don’t seem to support that view. These facts include the hodgepodge of government agencies that supervised the operation and granted exemption after exemption to the safety regulations that govern offshore drilling. Above all else, this pattern of exemptions makes our Prime Minister’s claim that It Can’t Happen Here a frightening toxin for those who live near the Beaufort Sea and other regions where drilling will occur. Why frightening? Because regulations don’t keep pace with technology. They adjust by becoming inapplicable. They also have to be re-interpreted. And the people who determine what is inapplicable or what re-interpretations to choose can’t hold hearings and conduct debates. Decisions must be taken quickly. Mistakes are inevitable. Moreover, the regulators must come from the oil industry and return there after a period with government, if government and industry are to know what they’re doing. This can’t allow for the disinterested and informed decision-making we need to protect our shores. It’s impossible for Regulations to protect Canada. But neither the Conservatives nor Liberals are prepared to bite the bullet and make the tough decisions to prevent a similar disaster from taking place in Canadian waters.

The second article describes how freedoms are curtailed once government steps into a crisis. The natural instinct of politicians is to manage news, and this requires constraints on what reporters are allowed to see. The Deepwater Horizon blowout is a study in managed news, first by BP, then by government.

Our other articles discuss blatant bribery by Japan to influence whaling, a list of recent environmental catastrophes that make it difficult to choose the “worst”, and the complexity of economic issues in the next target of stock market bears: Spain.

Is this Ronald Reagan’s fault, harking back to his deregulation of the Air Traffic Controllers? We might blame ourselves also. Many Canadians feel outrage at the RCMP’s deceit and cowardice in the Vancouver Airport death, spreading into humiliation that our elected officials have done nothing to restore national pride or even confidence in our law enforcement. And politicians hope to receive respect? Not a chance.

Further this month, we present a couple of arithmetical puzzles; see how fast you can untangle them. In our Notes & Queries, we gather the names and background of the greatest con men in history. For Your Contemplation summarizes some difficulties in cancer research and decision-making, of which you’ll find the core in our first Article. Also in FYC, we direct you to a comment critical of the Greek bailout, or perhaps more gloomy than critical, and point out how we’re at the mercy of financial gnomes. In the Articles section, we see that there were prefabricated Greek buildings in Italy as early as the 6th century BC, and we might do better to acknowledge how little we know about the tide of future political and economic events, raising the question how we should pick politicians.

They’re unknowns. Get a hawk’s eye view from our Articles Section. Also see how the physical world around us affects our sense of right and wrong. No, this isn’t the latest elaboration of Stanley Milgram’s work, but a snapshot of the impact of certain smells and the degree of light and darkness on our ethical behaviour. We look at the dilemma posed by Greece and its financial quandary. Greece falsified its data, but many countries do, and not just those in the Club Med belt. Moreover, banks and other financial institutions have encouraged Greece along the debt-default path and now are betting against recovery by selling short on the credit-swap insurance exchange. At some point, nations will have to rein in the financiers and it won’t get easier as time passes. We can’t neglect VANOC’s wretched treatment of other competitors in contrast to Canadian teams. Could it really be true that our athletes had ten times the practice runs in luge than other countries? Perhaps I’m wrong, and this was skiing rather than luge. Still, the egos of Ignatieff and other Own The Podium media slaves make melancholy reading. This country doesn’t belong to Canadians anymore, but a hybrid of fundamentalist Republican and Hollywood guru. The ethos of win-at-any-cost or it’s-OK-because-it’s-within-the-rules is, well, shameful.

They’re unknowns. Get a hawk’s eye view from our Articles Section. Also see how the physical world around us affects our sense of right and wrong. No, this isn’t the latest elaboration of Stanley Milgram’s work, but a snapshot of the impact of certain smells and the degree of light and darkness on our ethical behaviour. We look at the dilemma posed by Greece and its financial quandary. Greece falsified its data, but many countries do, and not just those in the Club Med belt. Moreover, banks and other financial institutions have encouraged Greece along the debt-default path and now are betting against recovery by selling short on the credit-swap insurance exchange. At some point, nations will have to rein in the financiers and it won’t get easier as time passes. We can’t neglect VANOC’s wretched treatment of other competitors in contrast to Canadian teams. Could it really be true that our athletes had ten times the practice runs in luge than other countries? Perhaps I’m wrong, and this was skiing rather than luge. Still, the egos of Ignatieff and other Own The Podium media slaves make melancholy reading. This country doesn’t belong to Canadians anymore, but a hybrid of fundamentalist Republican and Hollywood guru. The ethos of win-at-any-cost or it’s-OK-because-it’s-within-the-rules is, well, shameful.

Also in FOR YOUR CONTEMPLATION, review the first of the New York Times’ series on negligence in radiation treatments, the awful effects and concealment of blunders by private institutions and government, failure of medical colleges to police themselves, and the foolishness of placing blind faith in doctors. These political and medical failures, motivated by greed and laziness, promise to be a big scandal. What’s the betting that Canada’s system is worse?

For sheer fun and frolic, Mensa Calgary’s monthly schedule these days is tough to beat. Try our Second Tuesday, Hockey Night or beer evening, Science Café, Movie Matinee, Dinner Night, or any of the special tours and visits that mark our calendar. It’s an amazingly cheerful crowd you’ll encounter. Click on the Events Page to find more. You gotta love it. Mensa, my friend, is the in-place for 2010.

First, our government closed hospitals and eliminated numerous hospital beds. Unneeded, these were. Then we experienced a spate of new hospitals under construction and stories of patients lining corridors and being forced into rooms with patients of the opposite gender, because of lack of hospitals and beds.

Second, the government created local boards of health. The rationale was that local men and women would staff the boards and create priorities based on local knowledge. The secret reason was that the government could evade accountability by blaming local boards for errors. Then the government abolished local boards and created a super board, which again it can blame for errors, but which has no conception of local needs and supplies. For example, there used to be three or four doctors in Calgary who performed prostate cancer surgery. Now there’s one. Why? Because of lack of operating room time. Patients have to wait longer for surgery. We know that there’s a lack of operating rooms, but does the super board? Apparently not. And did you know that robotic equipment, which makes prostate surgery much more accurate and successful, has sat for months unused because nobody is being trained to use it? Great job, super board.

Third, the H1N1 vaccination fiasco, in which nobody thought there would be line-ups for the vaccine. Great planning by our government.

Fourth, the closure of beds for senior citizens just as the boomers are increasing demand.

We must be wrong. Everything is fine in Alberta.

Readers might study Feature2 Tainted Beef especially carefully and avoid this perilous product. Or is the information inapplicable to Canada?

As details emerged of the deadliest attack on US forces in 15 months Nato confirmed that it had withdrawn from Camp Keating in Nuristan but insisted that the pullout was part of a relocation of troops to places with larger populations, which was planned weeks ago.

The Taleban claimed victory nonetheless. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman, said that the US military destroyed what remained of the outpost. “This means they are not coming back,” he said. “This is another victory for Taleban. We have control of another district in eastern Afghanistan.”

Soldiers who were inside the isolated base and helicopter pilots who came to their rescue have spoken of the attack that left eight Americans dead and 24 wounded. They told ABC News that they had never seen such a large insurgent force and that by the time the fighting ended the survivors had nothing left “except the clothes off their backs and the weapons in their hands”.

The base, built in 2006 in a steep valley near the Pakistan border, was always vulnerable to attack by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire from the surrounding mountainsides but had never been assaulted on such a scale.

The insurgents had reportedly stockpiled weapons in a mosque. They attacked before dawn, firing machineguns from the slopes. They almost immediately plunged the base into darkness by destroying the generator and soon managed to set it ablaze.

The garrison had already been reduced as part of the pullout plan. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US forces in Afghanistan, has been closing bases as part of his counter-insurgency strategy to protect Afghans from the Taleban. The danger, however, is that large areas of the country would inevitably fall under Taleban control.

The remaining American and Afghan soldiers in Camp Keating summoned air support. “We were basically surrounded 360 degrees,” said First Lieutenant Cason Shrode, 24, who was directing the airpower from the operations centre at the base. “We had fixed wing [jets] 20 minutes after the fight started. We had helicopters 20 minutes later . . . We had so many different assets up in the air . . . they were stacked on so many different levels.”

Chief Warrant Officer Chad Bardwell, 35, who piloted an Apache helicopter gunship, told ABC that “when we first showed up and put our sensors on Keating, it was just kind of shock . . . All the amount of flames and the smoke and to see that amount of [enemy] personnel running outside of their wire.”

Chief Warrant Officer Ross Lewallen, his co-pilot, added: “I’ve been on three deployments and I’ve never seen that large a force attacking one static position.” He said that dozens of insurgents encircled the blazing camp.

The battle raged all day. The US pilots struggled to find the insurgents because of the smoke and rugged landscape.

Chief Warrant Officer Lewallen said: “There are a lot of rocks and a lot of cover. You really can’t detect the enemy until they start moving again.”

Three Apaches were hit but the sky clouded over during the afternoon, which helped the pilots. “We were able to see some of the larger muzzle flashes that were a little higher in the mountains,” Chief Warrant Officer Lewallen said. “We started to eliminate the larger weapons.”

Inside the base soldiers gave blood to help injured comrades as the casualities mounted but medevac helicopters were unable to land until after dark in case the insurgents had machineguns trained on the landing zone. Even then, according to ABC, wounded soldiers insisted on staying to fight.

The air power eventually prevailed but not before most of the base burnt down.

Nato claims that more than 100 insurgents were killed and says that local tribal militia were helped by local Taleban and an insurgent group called Hezb-e-Islami, led by the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is believed to be hiding in Pakistan.

The eight dead soldiers were aged between 21 and 30 and were all from 4th Infantry Division, based at Fort Carson, Colorado.

(martin fletcher, The Times, 10October2009)

POST BANFF REGIONAL GATHERING

First of all, congratulations to Robert Lee and Leslie Forward on their wedding. Best wishes for a future filled with splendor and delight.

After the fun at Banff, the rest of us should take a breather to recoup our strength and set new goals, but instead it seems more apt to meditate and ponder the sermons of the Buddha. So we shall. And into the bargain deliver a special tip of the hat to our Banff sponsors, namely PuzzleMaster (http://www.puzzlemaster.ca/), Bernard Callebaut Chocolaterie (http://www.bernardcallebaut.com) and Harmony Ball Company (http://www.harmonyball.com/). PuzzleMaster: if you want challenging puzzles, look them up on the net and pick your favorites. They were a delight at the RG, and offer spatial conundrums ranging from easy to Mensa-Bewares. Looking for sweet delight? Check out Callebaut’s mouth-watering taste and superb presentation. And who do you call for sculptural eccentricities, objects or figurines that project class and style? Harmony Ball. Moreover, they supported us, so – with the holidays not far off – let’s support them.

We invite new ideas as always for Mensa Calgary. Send your wishes for our programs, processes and goals to Vicki (vherd@shaw.ca) and offer to make your presence felt in a practical way if you can.

   

In this month’s MensaMag, we’ve curtailed ourselves owing to the effort required by our RG (see above) in which we’re justly proud, and because our editor has cancer and his chemo/radiation treatments are causing him fatigue beyond the worst nightmare one can imagine. Let’s all hope for a better month ahead.

And for those who love mystery, there will be a treasure hunt at the RG. Spend the next few weeks hunting for clues, then turn up and engage in the real  thing. The search is on.

RESHAPING MENSA CALGARY

Heart of a vigorous oil and gas economy (albeit momentarily mothballed) and home to a young, technologically literate population (scrambling to find work or leisure or both), Calgary has more engineers per capita than any other city in the world. We likely also have more creative souls and a burning desire for improvement. Mensa Calgary has therefore launched a mission, to wit redesigning its communications to reflect 21st century needs. Which means? For one thing, we converted to an all-electronic newsletter a couple of years ago, but still send email notices separately and maintain a limping Facebook group. There’s no reason not to consolidate these platforms and integrate more imaginative functions into the bargain. When a member has an idea, there’s no reason not to text a note via cell and start chatting with members instantly. If you suddenly have a spare evening and want to take in a Korean movie at the Plaza, we’ll make it easy to see if anyone else is free that day and wants to come. No more horse-and-buggy announcements. No more consulting an e-mag, then Facebook, then whatever else we have on the burner that year. No, the old monthly coffee meetings and bookclub and dinners may remain or not, but those who embrace a faster lifestyle and more excitement will also have a place in the Mensan sun. And so the challenge: to imaginatively construct a system in which all your wishes, as a Mensan, are met, in which you can find kindred spirits, form instant subgroups and reform them tomorrow for different purposes without fuss or disappointment. Send your ideas to any of the members listed in MensaMag’s Contacts page. 

]]> http://www.mensacalgary.org/home-4/feed/ 0 http://www.mensacalgary.org/home-3/ http://www.mensacalgary.org/home-3/#comments Sun, 01 Feb 2009 00:36:31 +0000 editor Home http://www.mensacalgary.org/home-3/ BANFF 2009: MENSA IN THE MOUNTAINS

Contact us with your comments, articles and queries. (As we’re crawling in spam, don’t use the editor’s address but rather almostp@shaw.ca.)

BANFF 2009: MENSA IN THE MOUNTAINS

Our Regional Gathering (September 2009) already has taken on mythic proportions. Great speakers, beautiful surroundings, hikes, games, exciting topics, all look like making it an occasion to remember. You can customize it to suit your tastes, so why not build your holidays around the event? And explore whether you can make it tax deductible. Get your thoughts to Patricia (almostp@shaw.ca) or volunteer to help out. Make this Gathering the best ever.

This month, we do not study Calgary’s health care system, waiting times at hospitals, public transit interruptions, or traffic delays (inversely proportionate to expenditure). We publish no reports on political apathy. We ignore the performance of Alberta’s heritage fund compared to Alaska’s equivalent. Why? It’s provocative to foster dissent. We live in paradise. We’re content to send soldiers to die in a war they can’t win, that’s true, and the war is on the other side of the world, a country whose dominant product is heroin, that’s also true, but criticizing the war is frowned upon. It’s definitely gauche. We take another innocent look at it this month.

We glance at the colossal sums spent on war compared to pulling back from a global depression. Human beings are weird. It’s acceptable to dump vast sums into slaughter, but we meanly and with thin lips parcel out smaller amounts to prevent famine, disease, unemployment, illiteracy, and the like. Add currency shortage to the economic firestorms sweeping the globe and it’s a small stretch to food shortages and hoarding. Iceland is a harbinger of things to come in Canada, and we vouchsafe ourselves a brief look at the problems we may soon face. Other problems involve civil liberties and our propensity to throw them out the window. If you’re brown-skinned or have a brown-skinned friend, you may find your name on a CSIS or RCMP watch list. But you wouldn’t know till it’s too late. Best to stick to white sliced bread, right? Wrong? Safer surely to solve math puzzles than grapple with a government gone mad. Life’s too short.

Dirty tricks and politics seem to go hand in hand in the US. This isn’t a recent phenomenon. We look at a potted history of American lies and deception in the public arena. Joe the Plumber temporarily gained renown or notoriety; we see how and why, and gaze a bit behind the scenes.

The price of oil, now there’s a topic we can’t avoid. We get an ounce of historical perspective and, hey presto, things don’t look quite so bad. In fact, delusion and panic are the main elements in the picture. Good time for a vacation from the newspapers and TV. Read a book, fiction preferred. Though when we re-enter the world of suits, we have to ask where to place the few shekels we’ve saved. A bank, someone says. But which bank? Out of England comes the first systematic method which ordinary savers can apply to test the reliability of their financial institutions. Don’t judge by the Doric columns outside.

The sexist bias directed by the media against Sarah Palin should embarrass us all. Whatever her capacities or lack thereof, the double standard applied to men and women is degrading and a sobering reminder that prejudice is alive and well and as powerful as ever in public life. The same gender discrimination was directed against Hillary Clinton, but for the moment we look at Palin. See the study of the wardrobe issue in our Features section. And we remind ourselves that tribal and ethnic hatreds rage just below the surface of 21st century life. It follows that there will be other major wars. The only question is when and where. The longer we can delay them, the better. Or does this merely foster the foolish illusion that it’s as easy to finish a war as to start?

Contact us with your comments, articles and queries.

Scattered through this issue of MensaMag are photographs from the last time around.

I’m waiting for someone to make an Emperor’s New Clothes statement. Not that it would necessarily help our economic plight; we’re too near the cliff to stop running.

What’s an Emperor’s New Clothes statement? It’s a bromide like "Unregulated markets are a recipe for disaster" or "If America elects McCain, run and sell dollars". Take Lewitt’s excellent piece from the NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/16/opinion/16lewitt.html?_r=2&th&emc=th&oref=slogin&oref=slogin) as an example. It purports to be a concise explanation of the importance of AIG’s survival in the current turmoil. But the unvoiced topic is more strident. Most paragraphs beg the question whether focused and determined regulation would have prevented or significantly defused the crisis. At a higher level of abstraction, financial markets and global warming run parallel (pace Jim Szpajcher). Activities in the sectors are ideologically buttressed, the ideologies at present are infected with the couch potato’s disease of laisser-aller, and beliefs are held with adamantine firmness. The question whether, at some point, we lose control and undergo ‘extinction events’ is similar to whether, at some point, we become too insane to withdraw from the supporting ideology.

On the other hand, it’s curious that no bankers and fund managers are jumping from windows.

Today, foolishness has no limits and intelligent souls must struggle to learn their surroundings. What does this mean? Well, for a start, published data about house values can be trashed. They equate Vancouver and Peachland, urban cores and suburbia. All these are thrown into a pot and we’re given the average cost of a Canadian home. There’s no advance in this beyond incantation and alchemy. We know the information is nonsense, yet we tolerate it. On the plus side, there’s virtue in politeness. On the negative, the mental rot created by advertising and politicians and the debunking of education has sunk deep roots. As a community, we may have entered a dreamlike state like Snow White without the Prince. Returning to our example, rising fuel costs will make suburban living a costly nightmare. Buy a house in the suburbs? Can I sell you shares in an American bank? Downtown in a small city or town is the only sane living environment. Or, more generally, we’ll soon apply a multiplier to real estate values based on proximity to jobs. Meanwhile the insane dream of single-family home plus two cars in a sweet suburb, weekly shopping trip to the box stores, two incomes and lots of leisure to spend with the adorable kiddies, lives on. Would you believe it? Of course there are exceptions, for example gold-rush towns and the service sectors they support. Calgary is typical. But even here the shoe hasn’t dropped as to the gap between suburb and downtown property values. Watch for it.