COWORKER BLUES

Some of my coworkers read this site, so they will sympathise with me when I confess that I want to murder one of our fellow employees, a skinny eighteen year old running around the basement on a permanent sugar high, screaming out 70s rock lyrics and grunting like a gorilla on crystal meth. He followed me down the hallway today barking or something. In his defense I submit that he has fine penmanship.

WHO WILL DROP-KICK AN ACROBAT FOR ME IS AMONG THE FAVOURED

Will someone out there go beat up the people who created Adobe Reader? Give them a roundhouse, a knuckle-duster, a spinning crescent kick, or maybe one of those crazy hadooken fireballs of Street Fighter fame? Smack 'em? Because really, opening up a document in Adobe Reader is kind of like crossing a field in early April and suddenly finding yourself in a soaking soggy swamp that, while passable, cannot be accomplished without picking your way around obvious puddles and patches of sucking mud. In any case, muddy pantlegs and cold wet socks will be your reward. How many cumulative hours of my life have I spent watching that goddamn splash screen load a thousand freaking subroutines and modules? It's like going to a grocery store that has to stock its shelves every time you visit. How many molars have I ground to powder as Adobe Reader sluggishly goes to the next page or kindly shows me only a fraction of the page I want to look at?

Most irritating of all, how many software updates does it offer that are not really Adobe Reader software at all, but various programs intended to enhance my general Adobe experience? There's always something utopian but hegemonic about software upgrades, as if the company has decided that your computer must be an indispensable accessory to every aspect of your lifestyle, so their all-purpose suite of applications should be indispensable to your computer. I trust you see the syllogic of it, the sleezy modus ponens of software developers. Want to organize your family photos? Cyber-stack your MP3 library? Lay open your computer to automatic tinkering from various companies who pretty much regard you as a potential risk, the equvalent of a herd of wild game that occasionally wanders onto someone else's property? Maybe that's why the software is so muddy; it may make the terrain lousy, but you won't want to bother fording it or look too closely at what you're stepping in.

ANGER A FLORIDAN: BLOW UP GREENLAND

Because I enjoy the impression that my words, at least on this site, are more interesting than other people's words, I generally try not to quote at great length from other sources. I'm kind of the anti-Benjamin, although it's hard to say what Benjamin would have done with hypertext. The Arcades Project might have been nothing but a list of links. Or perhaps Benjamin would have written an extended essay, but various words, phrases and paragraphs would have been linked to snippets of Baudelaire etc. ('etc.' meaning in this case whoever else Benjamin quoted from in The Arcades Project because I can't remember a single source or line from that whole freaking book). Or perhaps he would have given it a graphical organization. There are people out there who've developed entire theories based on the felicities and quirks of hypertext, from computer geeks to English geeks, and all the geeks in between. Except maybe for model train geeks. Anyway, in the spirit of not at all being geeky, I was going through copies of the Toronto Star from 1945 and found an article that advocated, among other things, bombing Greenland in order to improve Newfoundland's climate. Here are excerpts from a front-page article that appeared the day after Hiroshima turned to gas and ash:

Cambridge, Eng. Aug 8th - In this quiet and ancient university town, in one of the laboratories where the atom was first split, I have heard predictions so fantastic I hesitate to set them down. I was shown a vision of a re-made Canada, with the climate of California, its topography of mountains, valleys and rivers altered better to suit men's needs, and barren lands made fruitful by the magic of atomic energy.

"Mountains may be disintegrated, glaciers removed and frigid zones warmed by their own hot water system," forecast a scientist who must remain nameless, for scientists are expected by their universities, at least by English universities, to be dull, factual men, and this one spoke with the imagination of a Jules Verne or H.G.Wells.

Some day it may possible to turn all the [nuclear] energy into heat energy, but even the heat now released has tremendous possibilites. "It may conceivably eliminate the Canadian winter," I was told. "From a plant at Nipigon - at Nipigon because there can be made available the electrical energy needed to transform the atom - atomic heat might be poured into Lake Superior between October and April, raising the water to summer temperature or higher".

"This warmed water, flowing through the Great Lakes and their connecting rivers, would turn lakes Huron, Erie and Ontario into great radiators, surrounding southern Ontario with gentle warmth and giving it the climate of Florida or the French Riviera..."

Even more within the bounds of practicality is the removal of the Greenland ice cap with the resulting moderation of the climate of Labrador, Newfoundland and northeastern Quebec.Some years ago the possibility was considered of removing the ice cap with thermite... but found the expense would be prohibitive.

"It doesn't seem too much to believe that the ice cap can be removed completely by atomic bombing," I was told. "Relieved from the refrigerated winds from Greenland, Newfoundland might become warmer more productive".

Up until this point the author seems quite sanguine about the prospect of massive environmental heat pollution and detonation of, um, a whole lot of atomic bombs. Then comes the note of caution:

There is danger, however, in meddling with the world's climate, I was warned. Improving the climate of one section may have unforunate results on another. Thus raising temperatures in Canada might also raise them in the United States, and while the northern states might not mind, the south may think they are plenty hot enough already.You can look at the piece in its entirety here. You can also take a look at the other major front-page article for that date, bearing the headline "Inside and Outside Everybody Died as Hiroshima Razed, Tokyo Reports" (my apologies here for the exceedingly poor image cropping).

There you have it.The main worry about dropping atomic bombs on Greenland lies in its potential for offense to the sensibilities of Floridans or Tennesseeans. Why isn't our stupidity so visionary today? Once our goals were: turn the Great Lakes into the world's biggest radiator. Now it's: embrace the New Economy and endless wealth download latest news and stock quotes to your PDA - for free!

parode - exode