Toronto garbage

There's currently a garbage worker's strike in Toronto. (Other municipal workers in the same unit are also on strike.) This is fine -- I'm all for higher wages; my own union threatened as much in our negotiations -- but some of the temporary measures taken to deal with the garbage are terrible. Toronto creates a lot of garbage, which is essentially invisible as long as it's getting taken away on a daily basis. Now that it is lingering, the public trash cans are overflowing mounds of slowly rotting trash on street corners.

While jogging, I came across a public park with an outdoor hockey rink, surrounded by chain-link fence and stacked full of bags of garbage. Further running around the area revealed that, for the duration of the strike, this neighborhood had established a temporary drop-off at the playground. Gross. It was fragrant from blocks downwind. Yuck.

The union certainly picked the right season to go on strike; in the winter, we could just store the garbage outside and freeze it for months without a thought.


This post's theme comic:

Own an integer!

What's your favorite number? Statistically, it's very likely that there is someone else out there with the very same favorite number, despite the fact that there are infinitely many numbers and finitely many people to claim them. So what to do, what to do? Get in a fight with the other million people who like 7, or pi, or the golden ratio? No! Why not just own a 128-bit integer of your very own?

It may not make sense, but thanks to some recent lawsuits, it's now (sort of) possible to own an integer (if you buy into that sort of thing). Everybody had better stay away from my integer,

27 1D 04 35 51 27 3D 19 28 85 FC 1B 7D 53 F1 3E

If I catch you using it, I'll probably have to sue. ... because I take all my cues from the litigious movie industry! (Hat tip: the HCS mailing list.)


This post's theme word: mathematicaster, "a minor or incompetent mathematician."