Survivor

Well, I did it. Survived my first BA Applied Communications 3-week residency, that is. And yeah, it was pretty intense, but it was also a heck of a lotta fun and it confirmed that coming to Royal Roads University was a gosh-darn great decision.

We squashed a whole semester into three weeks of Professional Writing, Public Speaking and Presentations, Communications Theory, and a KCF/PETA case study. I could have done without the Professional Writing class, seeing as I have a degree in that field, but I learned a lot in the other three classes.

Added to the fun classes and excellent teachers, my cohort of 33 leaners (class with 33 students) has some pretty awesome people in it, and I know that some lasting friendships will result from a year together. Here's a few pictures:

Contrails and chemtrails, oh my!

Contrails and Chemtrails

In my previous blog, I promised that contrails and chemtrails would be the topic of my next blog after I found time to do the research. Thanks to my super busy schedule, including scheduled drinking by entertainment committees, I haven't yet had the time to do any research. But I have to prepare a 1-minute speech for my midterm tomorrow so I figure I can keep track of my research and write my blog at the same time. Have I mentioned I'm quite fond of the one stone-two birds approach? On second thought, let's just write my speech right here...

***

I was sitting in the backyard having coffee with Annie, my landlady, the day after I moved to Victoria when all of a sudden she pointed at the sky and said, "Oh, they're putting an X up there again."

Who are they, I wondered, and what is she talking about, anyway? I looked up and saw a big white X in the sky that looked like skywriting. "Neat!" I said.

Annie looked at me. "No, it's not," she said, and proceeded to tell me about contrails and chemtrails.

Who here knows what contrails are?

wait for hands, ask for definition

According to Wikipedia, "contrails are formed by condensation of water vapor in the aircrafts' exhausts."

Contrails are the white trails we see behind airplanes. They result when water vapor condenses in airplanes' exhausts, and they require a certain humidity and temperature range in order to form. They typically dissipate within about 30 seconds, give or take.

Some contrails, however, don't dissipate. Not only do they not dissipate, but they make strange patterns like grids, exes, and crosshatches. They started showing up in the 90s in various parts of the US, and started showing up in Victoria about seven years ago. Needless to say, these contrails are called chemtrails, and have garnered several theories as to what they are.

Some of the theories include things like biological warfare, mind control, and occult purposes. The main theory going, however, and the one that Annie filled me in on, is about weather modification.

According to proponents of weather-modification conspiricies, the US government is spraying aluminum oxide and barium into the sky to deflect one per cent of the sun's rays to cancel out or reverse global warming. This is also called global dimming. I think it's really scary if it's true.

Both the U.S. and Canadian militaries deny any such thing, of course. They maintain that the trails called chemtrails are merely contrails that are influenced by higher altitudes, and that patterns in the sky are the result of wind pushing the trails aside in an orderly way. It's interesting these same institutions claim that at that altitude, the winds are too unpredictable to allow for controlled weather modification.

I’m not much for conspiracy theories, but the research I’ve done here won’t let me rule this particular one out. Annie’s had some rainwater tested, and it came back with high aluminium and barium levels. And no matter what, that X sure looked like it had a purpose.

***

OK, this speech is way too long for a minute, so I'm going to edit it down in Word now. Here are some links that I don't have time to explore in any depth:

NASA releases alarming chemtrail photo

Tape Seems to Confirm Chemtrails A Military Operation
Whitley Streiber's Unknown Country

The Government's Top-Secret Efforts To Control Mother Nature
By Bob Fitrakis and Fritz Chess
ColumbusAlive.com

Chemtrails - Coming Out Of The Closet?
Marcus K. Dalton
Tribune Media Group

The new digs

Everybody I talked to about moving to Victoria said the same thing, and they were right: "you're gonna love living there." It barely even took a day.

After a day of ferries and waiting for ferries, I arrived at my new home in Colwood late Wednesday afternoon. By the time I discovered the pebbly little beach at Albert Head Lagoon on Thursday afternoon, I could see myself living on Vancouver Island quite happily for some time to come.

Besides driving around looking for cool beaches to chill at, I've been getting to know my new house mates. It's a little more crowded here than I was expecting - there's two people downstairs and two other people besides myself upstairs, plus an extra two people - one on the couch and one under the deck. They're all cool people though, although everyone except the landlady will be gone by the end of the month when her daughter will move in downstairs and two more Royal Roads students will move in upstairs with me.

This morning I went for a walk with my coffee - one house down, there's a grassy path between it and the next house down leading to a little forest with trails in it: Gamble Park. I followed some trails to the sound of water, and came to be standing some thirty feet above a small river that fell down a little waterfall. Across the river from me were a buck and two does. I halted my progress and sat down to listen to the waterfall and admire the deer, who resumed their morning munching after assessing that I was no threat to them. All this, only two minutes from my door. Who wouldn't love it? I'm only chastising myself for neglecting to bring my camera with me, so I'll have to add some graphics to this post some other time.

The only downer of living here is the signs of weather control. Something to do with the airplanes making crosses in the sky and emitting stuff from their tails, according to my landlady. And something that probably wouldn't sound too far-fetched to Sidney Sheldon, author of Are You Afraid of the Dark. In the author's note, he comments that the technology to effect local weather changes is both available to us and in use. So my next blog entery will have a look at humans altering the weather, once I get a chance to do some research.