Vancouver Open 2008, post mortem

After years of practice, I entered my first Rubik's Cube speedsolving competition...only to get schooled by a 7th grader.

The first official competition outside of Toronto, the event conformed to standards held by the World Cubing Association, complete with judges, scramble algorithms, and trash talking only done in the most light-hearted sense.

I've been eagerly awaiting this competition, even though I have yet to crack the sub20 second mark (one of the desired benchmarks is a 15 second average, and the world record is currently under 9 seconds), but was able to hold my own enough to make final round. Among the highlights of the competition:

• Top three places for Rubik's Cube held by newcomers Ibrahim Vajgel-Shedid (average of 15.47 seconds), Kristopher de Asis (average of 18.14 seconds), and Deseree Aune (average of 20.83 seconds), making her the fastest female Canadian cuber.
• Ibrahim Vajgel-Shedid winning at pretty much every event he entered - MiniCube (2x2x2), Rubik's Cube (3x3x3), and Rubik's Revenge (4x4x4).
• American Jameson O'Connor bringing his entire twisty puzzle collection, ranging from eBay rarities to custom pieces...many of which ended up getting broken. Oops.
• Organizer Hong Chen capturing the first place rank for blindfold solving, followed by Kristopher de Asis. Everyone else didn't finish.

A respectable showing, but hopefully the first of many. Now to get a sub20 Rubik's Cube solve.

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Weird Eats

"Ancient people found that their clothes got cleaner when they washed them in a certain point in the river. Y'know why? Human sacrifices were once made on the hills above the river. Bodies burned and water seeped into the wood and ashes to create lye."

"Look at your hand. The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes. Like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing."

-Tyler Durden, Fight Club

While having dinner with my girlfriend and a mutual friend, the dinner conversation turned to odd foodstuffs and the mindset required to actually resort to consuming them. My girlfriend is a bit of a coffee connoisseur, so she inquired about obtaining kopi luak, a type of coffee that has been processed in the digestive system of the luak, the local name given to the Asian Palm Civet, a wild mammal native to South East Asia.

In theory, upon consumption, the luak's digestive system enzymes partially break down the coffee beans, removing much of the bitter taste after the undigested beans pass through the system. Upon harvesting (a task destined for Discovery Channel's Dirty Jobs, if there ever was one), these beans are cleaned, ground, and turned into the most expensive coffee in the world (never mind the fact that a 2008 Stanford study indicated that 1000 random taste testers couldn't tell the difference between that and the cheap brands).

This is but one of the weird foods that have become delicacies in parts of the world. Others may be familiar with durian, a fruit with an extremely foul aroma that has gotten it banned in public transportation in South East Asia. The Simpsons episode "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Bluefish" taught the world about fugu, a Japanese pufferfish that has been known to cause fatal poisoning when prepared improperly.

The conversation turned to us speculating as to how certain things defy all logic and wisdom and somehow end up being turned into food. If it's excreted from an animal's bottom, we leave it where it lies or we put it in a bag and toss it in the trash. If it's prickly and spiky and smells like turpentine and raw sewage, we leave it alone. If parts of it are poisonous, we don't touch the things. So how do they fetch stupidly high prices at the gourmet supermarket and restaurants? And why did we end up eating them in the first place? And who thought it would be a great idea to go to all this effort just to figure out how to eat it safely?

My first theory is that it's to do with desperation. When people get really hungry, people start eating just about anything. It's been established that dandelions, often the scourge of proud lawn owners, are edible and can even be found in salads. Denise suggests that everything is so accessible, that we've got bored with everything else.

So, that leaves the next question. How many people had to die before they figured out the proper way to prepare fugu? Fugu has been around as a foodstuff since at least 2000 years, so they've had at least that long to get it right, which invalidates my original theory that the Yakuza was using it as a method to kill off their enemies, and the survivors figured out that they were eating the right portions of it. An alternate theory is that they studied what predatory animals left behind and figured that those parts were toxic.

Denise tells me of a specific type of nut that must be prepared in a very specific manner -- it must be mashed, chewed, cooked for an exact period of time. Anything else and it will be toxic. And apparently, this was a traditional type of dish too (ie: before the invention of stopwatches and egg timers and the use of laboratory animals in research).

And then there's another alternate theory...it was force fed to the peasants so that the rich would know what food to eat without dying horrible deaths.

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Rubik's Cube Competition - Vancouver Open, June 14th 2008

(click to enlarge, click here to download a PDF.)

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Crisis? What Crisis?

While most people take comfort in knowing that they may be/are right, this is one case where I really, really hope that I'm wrong.

As of this writing, oil is over $126USD/barrel, the local gas station now charges $1.35 per litre of gas, food riots are occurring in Asia and Africa, global grain are increasing, leading to higher prices for staples here in North America and starvation and famine overseas, subprime mortgages are causing mass foreclosures and homelessness across America, and the world population just went past 6.666666666 billion people.

All of these are just ingredients to a perfect storm that will easily erode the global social infrastructure, leading to panic, chaos, civil unrest, and the downfall of western civilization.

This is something I've written about previously (see archives for more details) and I've realized that most people don't want to deal with it directly. Heck, I don't want to deal with it directly. The concept of the downfall of civilization is sobering and depressing. Who wants to think that their way of life is going to change for the worst? Who wants to think that all of humanity's great achievements will be lost and forgotten? Who wants to think about all of the mass employment that will result as the vast majority of industries dependent on energy will gradually become irrelevant? Aerospace, computers, film, electronics, robotics, automotive mechanics, airline travel, space exploration...all obsolete.

As much as I can hope and pray for a soft landing after our tumbling from the peak of civilization, I fear that it's not going to happen. Hurricane Katrina served as a horrible warning of what we can expect - the dissolution of social infrastructure leads to chaos. Katrina was evil mirror opposite of 9/11, where 9/11 was responded with an immediate outpouring of support, but the people of New Orleans were left to their own devices. So, when social infrastructure is completely powered by oil, what can we expect, except mini Hurricane Katrinas all over the world?

Ass-backwards approaches to the way we do things hasn't been helping matters along. In an effort to conserve oil, somebody thought it was a great idea to divert food stocks (ie: corn) and turn them into ethanol to power our monster SUVs and minivans, even though research indicates that the energy return on energy invested is negative. We regularly consume meat, even though we're essentially running at a fraction of energy efficiency, consuming 7 kilograms of grain to breed 1 kilogram of beef.

Many of our problems are indicative of a peak in oil production, given how much the price has increased lately (a gain of $30 a barrel in less than 5 months, $12 gain in less than a week), but we've been all focused on trying to curtail global warming and climate change. In effect, there's a strong possibility that the peak in oil production may essentially take care of the problem. With everybody priced out of the market and too poor to afford stuff, trucks will stop hauling our coveted Walmart crap across the country, China will stop spewing factory fumes into the air, and cars will be pulled off the road because no one can afford to fill up their tanks anymore.

Maybe, JUST MAYBE, after all the dust has settled, then we can work on rebuilding civilization to a more sustainable state. More emphasis on family, community, and the environment, less emphasis on consumption and individual achievement. The people will live healthier, happier, with less environmental toxins and pollutions and stress.

So will it be a soft landing or a crash landing? Well, at least if it's a crash landing, we'll recover faster.

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In Memoriam

In Memoriam
Victor Yim
July 5, 1937 - April 16, 2004

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They needed a specialist for THAT?!

Over the past few months, I've developed a moderate case of eczema, which is usually a manifestation of impaired liver function or allergies. I bit the bullet and went to a dermatologist in November and was scheduled to undergo a patch test to determine what I'm allergic to. This appointment is booked for December 19th.

I receive a phone call two days prior, telling me that the specialist was going on holiday. On the day of my appointment. While I admit that it was my bad not giving the right phone number, which resulted in a delay in them contacting me. However, I really question the professionalism when they give such last minute notice that they're going on vacation. And, they even tell me that there are no other appointment dates within a day or two of the original appointment date, so I now have to wait over a month.

Flash-forward to January 25th. I'm not really looking forward to this because I know allergy tests involve them scratching allergens into your skin. Then I finally find out that a patch test only involves them taping strips of chemicals to your back and then you come back 48 hours later to see what induces a reaction.

This takes a total of five minutes. This also obviously required the expertise of a specialist, because there was no way they could get just about anybody else from the office to TAPE FOUR STRIPS OF MATERIAL TO MY BACK, because that's just so difficult and requires years of training and experience to do properly.

The upside is that I'll finally figure out what I'm allergic to so I can know what to avoid eating. The downside is that I can't shower until 48 hours after the patch test is administered and the chemical patches are removed.

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1 Guy 1 Bowl

My old supervisor once said that whenever a civilization is about to go under, they start doing all sorts of messed up stuff like human sacrifices, Roman showers, vomitoriums, and cannibalism. Somehow, I don't think we're that far off.

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