Christmas Eve Bike Ride!

This afternoon, with no snow to be seen and a temperature right around 8 C, I was able to make the bike ride to the comic store probably as late in the year as I ever have: Dec 24th!  I could've done without the 50 km/hr wind gusts that slowed me down at various points along the way, but overall it was a beautiful day for it.

Potentially Huge Climate Agreement Struck In Paris Last Week

The Paris Agreement on the reduction of greenhouse emissions could end up being one of those things that most people ignore while it's happening but which future generations consider among the most significant events of the 21st century.  Good on the world leaders for being able to make it happen!

At the very end of the article there's mention that

"All the countries agreed on demands from the US and European Union for five-year reviews of their emissions reductions – an exercise that had been resisted by China."

This seemingly trivial detail may turn out to be tremendously important, as it provides a framework for what's known as "inspection and adaptation" in the Agile software community.  The inclusion of a frequent, recurring process for seeing how you're doing, what's working and what isn't, allows you to adapt your methodology as you go along.  It takes away the necessity of getting everything just right from the start and empowers you to use whatever you learn along the way to do a better job.

On the other hand, it's particularly sad that the U.S. government is currently so dysfunctional that the agreement had to include wording to prevent the Luddite Republican party from vetoing America's participation in the deal.  Many Canadians like me were embarrassed by PM Stephen Harper's head-up-his-ass leadership over the past decade, but I can't imagine how awful the life of an intelligent citizen of the US must be these days with Donald Trump as the poster boy for one of the ruling parties.

Prime Minister Trudeau In The New York Times

Here's a pretty good article on PM Justin Trudeau from the Times, written by an expat Canadian who clearly knows his history.  And when he states that October's election was "nothing less than an existential struggle over what it means to be Canadian," he absolutely nails it.  Harper made a lot of us ashamed of our country with his pandering-to-the-wealthy, xenophobic, fear-mongering governing style that George W Bush would've approved of.  I don't profess to know how well Trudeau will do as a leader just yet but at least his espoused principles are much more in line with my own, something that clearly wasn't the case with his predecessor and his cronies.

December Biking

Somehow the original post about this got deleted today, so I'm just putting a Reader's Digest version back out here for my own personal records:

I got a bike ride in on Thursday this week, heading downtown for lunch with an old Canada Trust friend.  The temperature was just above freezing but it was sunny and clear, and it doesn't get much better than that in December.  I may even get another ride in this week coming up, as it's supposed to be slightly warmer still.