Monday, December 24, 2007

TRaining for IM in 2008

I'm already a paid-up entrant in IMCanada Aug, 24th 2008 but the GF wants to go to Thailand in February for her holidays. I said I'll get the money together for that if we can fit in a triathlon in Langkawi.
Now I have to get myself fit enough to run the race on Feb 24th in 62 days!
Am I crazy or what?
I've been commuting by bike 2.5 hours a day until two weeks ago when the snow made the roads ridiculous for bike travel, but if it drops below zero again and dries up a bit I could ride throughout January - on the MTB of course.

Running is more of a challenge, because it is slippery out there on runners. Again if it dries up enough that I can see the sidewalk I'll do it. If not it's the treadmill for six weeks.

all for a silly t-shirt.

Bander, a.k.a.,
PrinceofClydes
@ trifuel.com

Monday, December 10, 2007

AIDS crisis in Africa - drugs the wrong approach

Of course, sick & dying people should receive medical aid from those rich nations who can give it.

However no cure as yet exists.

Those people in Africa who are now suffering from AIDS (30 million) are goners.

More than 50% of the 900 million population are under 25 years old, i.e. in their prime child-bearing years. To think that they will not have sex is ridiculous. They are mostly poor and cannot afford - contraception and their poverty means that they have STDs and no medical treatment available to remedy it. Therefore they will have more babies, more disease and because STDs make even consensual vaginal intercourse a high-risk sexual activity (which for healthy couples is not high risk) - they will have increasing HIV infection. - 3 problems at once.

- Merely shipping vast quantities of birth control pills would reduce the birth rate, but not reduce HIV-infection.

- Treating AIDs sufferers won't solve these problems at all.
- Treating STDs alone won't solve the population explosion.

What the West should be doing is shipping billions of condoms to every nation in Africa.

But the logistics of such a program is overwhelming.
If every act was to be condom-protected, and we assume that even half the current population has sex daily that would require nearly half a billion condoms DAILY.

Production of such a volume is probably impossible, the cost would be unsustainable for any Western nation, shipping and distribution seems like a task beyond even Hercules, but more significantly I cannot imagine the governments of African nations being politically willing to accept such aid - surely they would regard it as racist, paternalistic, insulting (when Western nations aren't doing it themselves) and given the corruption surrounding food aid, and medical aid in the past, it has no chance of succeeding.

In summary. I think the 30M now suffering from AIDs will soon die, that even more millions will contract HIV and die in coming decades.

However, the lesson of evolution has taught us that there will emerge in Africa huge numbers of people who are resistant to HIV. The weak shall die off and those remaining alive will be resistant and they will pass on that resistance genetically to their descendants while we in the developed nations will not have this resistance.

I can only imagine the consequences.

What goes around comes around.

Right now, former colonies who have become independent nations, are voicing demands that the developed nations - whose industrialization has caused the climate change - compensate them for this disaster, to the tune of 50 billion dollars a year! "You in the First World have created this mess," they are saying, "now you must compensate us for the damage you have done to our environment."

What goes around comes around, and so it will be with AIDs.

Thursday, November 22, 2007

A Sustainable World Civilization?

Is the human mind capable of grasping the complexity and the scale of the system we are trying to control?

The social organizations and coping habits we used 50k years ago are still in place today. Can we raise our consciousness enough to survive, as a species?

Ashby’s law of sufficient diversity. Ability to manage must expand geometrically with each linear expansion of the system that sustains us.

Asks, Prof. William Reece, UBC ecological economics



Humankind is little more than a vast collection of tribes and other self-interested groups who will fight tooth and nail, kill their neighbours without regret, and breed themselves out of existence rather than impoverish themselves to save some unrelated strangers ten thousand kilometers away.
World Society is a myth perpetrated by money-hungry corporations to sell widgets.

The few ridiculously rich people who adopt starving Ethiopean children or who kid themselves that recycling cardboard cereal boxes will make the slightest difference to the climate, aren’t enough of an ameliorating influence on the violent mobs that predominate the world population.

When the house gets cold, and food gets short, altruism goes out the window. It is a luxury of the rich and those who delude themselves that they are well off. Neighbours will come to blows over garden watering violations. It is foolish to think that food or fuel shortages, will somehow bring a population together to live in harmony more than a few weeks, as in say, a natural disaster. The latter only stimulates charitable behaviour when it is temporary and singular. When disaster is widespread and long term, altruism goes out the window.

The UN estimated 9.2 Billion population by 2050, should be a headline on every newspaper, every day, if we were serious about sustaining our current level of sophisticated world society. It isn’t.


Evolutionary forces operate on a time scale beyond the scope of most people to grasp.
The smartest people alive today are not more intelligent than people who lived before the earliest recorded civilizations. We have risen from the nomadic tribes of 10,000 years ago to the space age technological world society we have today. However the competition between groups, whether tribal, ethnic, cultural, gender, age, cult, gang, secret society, has not diminished.
Survival of a world society, however it is conceived by big thinkers, is a short-lived concept.
The industrial age, information age, as dependent as it is on cheap energy, is short-lived. It arose in less than two hundred years and can become medieval in nature and structure again in a few centuries.

In other words, human nature hasn’t changed enough for this complex, energy dependent, unsustainable society of 6-9 billion people to survive. How it will collapse will be a matter of dramatic and tragic events cascading one upon another until a dynamic stability is achieved.

Another way of looking at the question, “Is our world society sustainable? Can it be?” is to realize that the perception that we have a world society is not a universal one. The third world population, Africa, India, Asia, South America comprises 80% of the world’s population. They are poor. They do not perceive that there is a sophisticated wealthy, world society. Rather they think that there are a few rich people who have exploited them unfairly. They are right. 20 people living well, does not typify or identify the nature of a society when the other 80% are starving in sub-standard shelters with inadequate supplies of fresh water.

The chattering of hosts and guests on TV shows about this or that fashion, musical event or new widget (I-phone, say) is just a few rich people yakking with each other about how great their lives are while the vast majority of people – 5 billion or more worldwide – worry about where their next meal will come from.

There is no sense of reality in the world, just mass-deception and denial.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Amazon's Kindle Book Reader

Amazon unveils Kindle an electronic device that can store up to 200 books and downloads titles sold by Amazon - 80,000 titles already.

It’s not the first portable reading device, Bill Gates unveiled a book reader by Microsoft on a TV interview New year’s Day 2000 – for the new Millennium.

Sefton’s worried about the experience” of reading being degraded,, but being able to size the print for your eyes eliminates the need for Large Print editions as well as “normal” print sized books – surely a boon to an increasingly aging demographic. Flipping back and forth, etc. are all features that they will develop as soon as the readers give feedback. The Kindle 2.0 and 3.0 and 4.0 cannot be far behind. We are no longer using Windows 3.1, anybody miss it?

Scavella says books are biodegradable – Kindle cuts no trees in the first place
If cameras can be waterproof so can Kindle book readers, plus, nobody has yet died from a 9-volt battery discharge.

Rik wants finger touch screens, he’ll have them before Xmas 2008 – and more.
And, yes, Howard, top-to-bottom for Chinese characters as well. I bet they are already available in Taiwan but they never bothered to tell us waiguoren (foreigners).

Rachel – never mind page refresh and bleeding eyes – before you know it there will be an audio available with headphones for blind people. Character recognition from digital sources (ascii text) is easy – right now it sounds like Stephen Hawking but that will change. There will be a new industry for people with nice voices who can sight-read out loud. Screens have been improving amazingly in recent MONTHS!

Having your 200 volume library take up no more space than a pohone book does now is a huge boon for storage space, allergy sufferers who put up with book dust.

Costs come down so publishers will more willingly take on new writers or better yet, new writers can self publish as did James Redfield without huge risks in investment.

Writers may finally get paid what they are worth – it just may not be as much as they think it should be. This may herald the end of the wealthy author of a single best-selling book. There now can be thousands of new authors published each year instead of say, 10 per big publishing house, only a few hundred. (per language, per country)

Harry – the first transistor radio from Sony – in circa 1949 was ugly too, now we have Macs with ergonomic curves Gaudi would drool over (So you hate Gaudi, how about Frank Lloyd Wright?) We’ve got designer cell –phones already to match your clothes even.

Melanie, we can program sound effects like page-turning if you but want it – and birds chirping and groaning for the sex scenes too. Reading can be a multi-media experience like we’ve never had before.

We’ve never had it so good.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Water, water everywhere..

70% of the world's surface is covered with water, yet..

Southeastern US towns are now officially out of water - Orne, TN, for example.
The US SW especially Phoenix, is sucking eons old aquifers dry and when that deep, deep hole gurgles its last, people will be leaving Phoenix in droves. No water, no city.

They will truck it in, they will sell or distribute bottled water, which has to be trucked in, and that costs money. There is no big pipe they can use to transport water from say, Lake Mead to Phoenix. It doesn't exist. And this is in the world's richest country!

Southern Saharan states like Sudan - of which Darfur is a part - have been in a drought for decades, yet the overall population of Africa continues to rise. 900 million I heard today from the lips of Paul Martin the former PM of Canada.

Wars over water, oil, land, food - all over the world have their roots in poverty. When the poor get hungry or thirsty they get desperate and will become refugees or stand and fight. Fight or flight, it's what all animals do. Some governments prefer to sell them arms to fight their wars rather than sell them the technology to solve the problems. If the money spent of guns in north Africa from Somalia to Dakar had been spent on desalination plants say, nobody would be going thirsty. There would be irrigation. There would be food.

If Georgia and Tennessee had spent the money on water supplies they had spent on NASCAR and buying bigger trucks there would be no water shortage.

Still, water shortages and poverty are ultimately about population. Too many people fighting over finite resources. The problems will not stop until people stop making babies - and we all know how well that program is going to work, but if people don't stop reproducing at the rate that has produced 5 Billion people in 150 years, nature will do it for them.

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Forget Kyoto #4

At last, someone has said it in public and on the air - live - intentionally.

The US / Iraq /Afghanistan war is all about, and only about oil.

This morning, Alan Greenspan, beeing interviewed by Anna-maria Tremonte about his book, said that Hussein, had he achieved control of the Straits of Hormuz, through which 18 of the world's 85 million barrels of oil used each day passes, he could have brought the world's economy to a halt. By reducing shipments of mere 5-8 million barrels of oil per day the world's economy comes to a halt - that's quite a declaration from the former chair of the Federal Reserve Bank and former Chair of the World Economic Advisory Board.

I have been saying that the US will never be able to leave the Middle East militarily while it is dependent on Middle East oil supplies. Therefore US activity in obtaining oil must increase in countries outside OPEC to ensure multiple streams of supply.

Now that the cat is out of the bag, although the White House hasn't declared this to be the case - they continue to spin this as an idealogical struggle to set Iraquis free of an oppressive dictator and to enable them to set up a democratic government - we can see how important oil is and how scarce it is becoming. I am referring to the peak oil scenario which says that, since world oil production has peaked, every barrel that comes out of the ground henceforth will cost more and be more difficult to obtain than the previous one, - a scenario that says oil prices must climb at an ever increasing rate and will soon be no longer viable as a fuel source for personal transportation.

Home heating must move away from oil fired furnaces sooner or later but probably within our lifetimes.
This puts upward pressure on natural gas prices.
There will be a greater political move towards damming river valleys to create hydro-electric power. Hydrogen fuel needs electricity to produce it
Wind generation, tidal power, thermal generation - all will be viable as energy costs soar.
Terrifyingly, nuclear power becomes the vehicle of choice, on the coattails of new coal burning plants.

However you get it the world economy currently requires the energy of 85 million barrels of oil per day to function, plus the current hydro, coal and nuclear power it already consumes. As oil supplies dwindle alternative sources must be brought on line. Number one is coal, as I have already written previously. It is plentiful, relatively easy to obtain and therefore cheap. The world wants cheap power. It will burn coal. Forget Kyoto. It won't happen.

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Guy on CBC says, just turning off a light..

will make help solve global warming. What is he smoking?

Let’s review the Kyoto proposition.

Some simple arithmetic can illuminate the scale of the Kyoto problem.

Roughly speaking, the Kyoto accord goal is to reduce our greenhouse emissions (GGEs) by 50% by 2050.

Let’s restate that in terms of people. Reducing each person’s output by 50% is one way of achieving this, this is the equivalent of reducing the population polluting at current levels by 50% or 16 million people.

According to IIASA – an NGO, http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/ChinaFood/argu/trends/trend_10.htm
the Chinese population will increase by 260 million people in the next 30 years i.e. by 2037. Thus even if Canada achieves its Kyoto goal by 2050 it won’t mean a thing because, in terms of equivalent numbers of people, we will have reduced our population by 16 million people and they will have increased their population by 260 million, or 16 times our population.

Chinese are lesser polluters per capita you say? If the Chinese currently produce only a third of Canadian’s output, Canadian output from 16 million equals Chinese output from 48 million people, but that’s at today’s rates of output. Chinese industry and its economy is growing at great rates – China is bringing on line a new coal-burning electricity generation plant - every week, right now. By 2050 they will be equal with any developed nation. The comparison is equally valid with the population of India, which grew at 21% between 1991 and 2001, and is now more than a thousand million people and adds the equivalent population of Australia every year. Between 1947 and 1991, India's population more than doubled. Almost 40% of Indians are younger than 15 years of age.

Canada has 33 million people. China & India together = 2500 million people. At 2% growth per year, that’s 50 million more people every year.

Reducing pollution is generally a good idea in any case, but it is completely false to think anything we do, such as replacing light bulbs, switching off a light or driving a car one day less a week is going to have an impact on global warming. Canada is simply too small a population to matter.

Technological changes such as changing gas engines to hybrids are slow, long-term remedies.
In the short run, we can expect greenhouse gas emissions to be roughly proportional to economic activity. Were we to reduce GGEs by 30% in the next 5 years would mean a reduction of income and employment on a scale commensurate with the Great Depression. No government would inflict such disruption, nor should it.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Forget About Greenhouse Gases Part 2.

The nuclear energy industry will kill us all.

NRG Report:
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070924006333&newsLang=en
Report

"I’m excited to see an investor-owned company submit the first combined operating license application in nearly 30 years, and I hope it is the first of many to come,” said United States Senator Pete Domenici (R-NM), who serves as ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee."

The trouble with nuclear power is not that the plants are going to blow up and coat us with radioactive dust as it circles the globe for two and a half years as the dust from Krakatoa did, or that the plants will inevitably melt down like the one in the movie, The China Syndrome, or like Chernobyl, no, we have learned things from those events and from 3-Mile Island, about how to engineer multiple fail-safes.

Rather the threat comes from three prongs of the devil's trident:
one, the used fuel rods must be disposed of. They are typically encased in concrete and "stored" (dumped) in a facility in Nevada, or formerly dumped into a deep hole in the ocean, where inevitably they corrode and the radioactive waste leaks into the environment.

two, the mining and processing of the raw uranium, pollutes the mine environment hugely. The tailings are piled in huge mountains of waste material which leeches into the groundwater by rain which necessarily falls on the mounds of tailings. Mineworkers in northern Canada have higher rates of cancer than other citizens and die younger, typically, of cancers.

three - One 2700 megawatt plant in Texas - thousands of miles from the nearest source of Uranium - won't threaten the world's safety, but the report linked above speaks of an endless chain of nuclear power plants to replace America's dependence on oil - which will result in trucks and trainloads of nuclear material - used fuel rods and new fuel rods - criss-crossing the country on their way to and from power plants from coast to coast. If you have seen a semi-trailer of hazardous material spill on a highway, say, caustic soda, or diesel fuel, you know what a mess it causes, but in a day or two at the most it is cleaned up and traffic resumes like it never happened. The threat is short-lived. However, nuclear fuel rods have a half-life* of 25,000 years. This may necessitate the digging up of entire roadways for hundreds of metres around a spill to remove the radioactivity - which creates a bigger waste problem as this material - contaminated asphalt - must be safely disposed of.



*Half-Life - radioactive material dissipates half its mass in a period of time known as a "half-life." In the case of Uranium 238 isotope used in fuel rods the half life is 10,000 years. One ton of fuel rods will dissipate naturally to a half ton of mass in 10,000 years, to a quarter ton in another 10,000 years and so on.

"A large nuclear reactor produces 3 cubic metres (25-30 tonnes) of spent fuel each year."

The US Energy Authority say the waste material site in Nevada is secure. This authority is less than fifty years old. The whole country is only 231 years old. How can they claim it will be secure for 100 centuries ???

"As of 2003, the United States had accumulated about 49,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors."



The country-side surrounding Chernobyl is deadly to all life for thousands of square kilometres. That's one.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Forget about greenhouse gases..

if you don’t stop having babies, NOW!

I’ve shown that if ALL 33Million Canadians IMMEDIATELY cut their greenhouse gas output by 50% - the equivalent of killing off 16.5Million and letting the rest continue polluting as they have been. It wouldn’t matter a damn, because at a growth rate of only 1% China produces 14 million new people per year!

“The current annual population increase of about 80 million will remain constant until 2015.” - Source: "World Population Assessment and Projection, 1996.” the United Nations Population Division.

“Between now and 2050 world population growth will be generated exclusively in developing Countries.” - ibid.

“While such a steep decline, in fact, already happened in many European countries, it is rather unlikely that populous developing nations such as Pakistan, India, Indonesia or Nigeria - which greatly determine world population growth - would quickly follow this trend.” ibid.

Developing countries do not have the kind of regulatory agencies that the developed West - the G7 countries in particular, have. Their industries are notoriously dirty. Air pollution in Beijing has already made headlines - just because western athletes might be at a disadvantage there because they aren't used to breathing crap the way the Chinese athletes are. The facts are much, much worse.
China is planning hundreds of coal-burning power stations in order to compete in the marketplace, and to provide electricity for their increased urban populations as rural residents re-locate to the cities. China has over 200 cities with populations over 1 million people.






Published: Thursday, August 2, 2007 | 2:07 PM ET
Canadian Press
LITTLE ROCK (AP) - An Arkansas couple had a baby daughter today - their 17th child and seventh girl.

And the pair say they're still not ready to give it a rest.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Hope Springs Eternal

Now they are doing “hope studies” and conducting surveys to “measure hope”
Some exponents were on the CBC radio this morning telling us that “hope is correlated with almost every positive human experience.” Wizards, I tell you, absolute wizards. Probably earned several social work degrees, maybe even a Psych degree thrown in, to learn that one!
Of course hope is associated with positive experiences, get to first base and you suddenly hope you can get to second. Have a good appetizer and you hope dinner will be good too. Have one good relationship and you hope all relationships will be good. Now there’s where hope triumphs over experience!
Human behaviour follows patterns. You don’t have to be a genius to extrapolate that one positive experience might suggest a second one. Logically after any identifiable experience, say, a first day at a new school, job, etc. things can get either better or worse. We hope for the best, because healthy people seek good outcomes, that’s why. Those who always seek worse outcomes are defined as pathological – when they go beyond being merely a “gloomy Gus” – and we institutionalize the worst cases. The rest get referred for analysis and therapy.
As I wrote in an earlier blog, you get to choose your attitude. Since people respond more receptively to positive people, it makes sense from a survival perspective to be hopeful, act hopeful. Plus it tends to be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you have a hopeful attitude good things tend to happen more often. Make it a habit and you probably even turn bad things into a perception of good. When Fate gives you lemons, make lemonade.
I think these “Hope Merchants” are nothing more than the natural extension of the Oughties (’06, ’07, etc.) manifestation of self-help from the Eighties, the Personal Development of the 90s. Now we have Hope Studies. Self-help re-packaged. Nothing more than W. Clement Stone “Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude.” The British often said, Keep a stiff upper lip!” By which they meant, no crying!
PMA - It works but it doesn’t need re-packaging. The expectation is that if you don’t give it a facelift now and again people will disregard it as being “old stuff” that can’t possibly apply to today’s generation. Always they want something “New and Improved.”
The fact is, there is nothing new in it at all. Plato, and the other Greek scholars, wrote all this stuff down more than two and a half millennia ago. Marcus Aurelius re-wrote it 500 years later and it was praised then.
What we need is not a copywriter’s update of the truths of our earlier scholars, just a better classical education in the first place.

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

09/11 - BC has a new Lt.-Governor

For my non-Canadian friends, a Lt-Gov. is the representative of the Queen and among other things is a guardian of the constitution. After that it gets complicated but the L-G has no vote in parliament and is mostly ceremonial, but we do love our ceremonies!

This new L-G is, for the first time, a native aboriginal Canadian, Stephen Pointe, is a former Provincial court judge. This a.m. he was interviewed on CBC radio and among other things said, plagiarizing Norman Vincent Peale, "There is power in positive thinking."

Perhaps this epithet is now so apocryphal that NVP no longer deserves credit for the phrase, "The Power of Positive Thinking" which was the title of his 1952 book.

___________________

Also this morning CBC radio finally interviewed a lighting manager from the City of Calgary, Barry Poone, about their revolutionary street lighting which I wrote about (see my June 28th blog) several months ago! Alas, nobody listens to a lone voice in the wilderness. Now they all think they are the discoverer of this obvious improvement. I have been ranting about it for years. He spoke of the waste light refracted into space as seen in a satellite photo.

Fears of increased crime, devolution to previous eras in history such as a darkened wartime when blackouts prevailed. They studied crime rates in UK and Oz and concluded that lighting has no impact on crime but perception was changed. They felt afraid, but the people will get over it. I always maintained that what we were doing is lighting the streets at night just for the criminals! They are the only ones out there at 3am right? All good citizens should be at home in bed.

Invasive light coming in your windows and keeping you awake is also reduced.

Ah, but the savings! GIS studies revealed that 37,000 of 55,000 bulbs at half wattage saved $2 million per year! CO2 emissions are down hugely too, because Alberta produces 90% of its electricity by burning coal.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

100 acres of prime food-growing farmland gone!

A sports complex has been proposed for Vernon - Coldstream area, which will require excluding 100 acres of farmland in the Coldstream valley from the Agricultural Land Reserve, which is exactly what it sounds like. I have written the following letters to the Editor of the Morning Star newspaper here.

Dear Editor,

“Another 100 acres of prime food-growing farmland gone!” is what your headline should read.

A glance at the proposal for a sports complex on Hwy 6 clearly indicates that this project is designed to accommodate gas-guzzling vehicles, not hungry people. It is located on a main highway. It has huge parking areas – which should be growing locally consumable crops rather than being paved over to park pickup trucks. Talk about short-sightedness! Talk about terrible prioritizing!

Nearly every morsel of food eaten in Greater Vernon is trucked in from elsewhere, sometimes thousands of kilometres from where it is grown. It is counter-intuitive, read “stupid”, to pave over prime farmland in your backyard, and then to pay high costs to truck in the food you eat from California.

There are two world famous valleys in Canada – the Annapolis in Nova Scotia, the Okanagan in BC, and what they are known for is their fruit, their vines, their agriculture. It has been so since my great grandfather Victor Willett came here in the 1920s and grew an orchard on the west side and became the first postmaster at Ewans Landing. Pave over the farmland on Hwy 6 and soon enough there will be only one valley like it in Canada, and that will be the legacy of the Councillors who voted to approve it.





Hwy 6 project: “Field of Nightmares”

In my nightmares I see them coming, headlights along Hwy 6 gleaming through clouds of carbon monoxide, streaming towards the floodlit fields on the corner of Aberdeen Road that used to grow corn.

In Kevin Costner’s 1989 film, Field of Dreams, the premise was, “if you build it they will come.” That seems to be the dream of developers proposing the destruction of 100 acres of corn on Aberdeen Road to build softball diamonds. The nightmare is that they WILL come – hundreds of gas-guzzling, greenhouse gas-producing cars and trucks roaring in on oversized tires to leave oil and rubber residue on prime Coldstream farmland, farmland that could grow food to feed the people of Vernon.

Instead that food will have to be trucked in from hundreds, even thousands of kilometres away, at greater cost than if grown locally, covered in preservatives to keep it edible until it can get here. You KNOW this to be true. Consider this vision before you vote to approve plowing under, and paving over, some of the best remaining farmland in BC.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

2007 Ironman Canada Triathlon in the books

2007 results data

Time DIV DIV SwimDIV S.OVR TIME PACE T1
15:13:40 M55-59 68/109 73 1937 1:26:38 2:17 12:16

B. DIV BIKE TIME PACE T2 RUN OVR TIME Pace
53rd 1847th 7:02:57 15.9 11:48 76th 2264 6:20:04 14:31

My fourth ironman race is done and from the times above it looks like I haven’t learned a damn thing. Well, actually when you look deeper it shows that I am 4 years older and more cunning, because I am doing the same times 4 years on but on half the training. heh.

I swam just 7 times - the first one being July 6th. I rode the IMC course 11 times last year, only once this year and my bike split improved by 7 minutes!

My “walk-split” has been the same regardless. This year my long run was only 23kms which I did 10 times starting in May.

Seriously, my running has been neglected and there is no point in continuing to walk a 6 hour marathon once a year at $600 per!

Race day was almost perfect weather, cool, dry, - just some pesky headwinds starting at the 80k mark lasting the rest of the day but nothing a Clydesdale can’t handle. Lighter people were being blown around sometimes nearly being stopped in their tracks. I just plowed on through.

My swim plan worked out perfectly. I hugged the buoys and finished in 86 mins without mishap. I use a farmer john wetsuit and in the past it has billowed out in the chest increasing the drag. 2 weeks before the race I hit on the idea of wearing a cycling jersey overit to stop the billowing. It worked perfectly. I recommend it.

My old steel Bianchi flew down to Osoyoos in 1:52:00 - that’s 35.69kph - making up 250 places, 60 of which I lost going up the Richter. I climbed the Richter in 42 mins. In training it usually takes me 34 to 46mins, so that was okay. On the descent cars travelling alongside racers to cheer “Daddy” slowed me down. I descend into roller number one at 75-80kph and they were tracking Daddy at 55. I had to brake. Bummer.

I sailed along well enough to Beck’s road in Cawston but had some cramping in my left quad that forced me off the bike. I downed 3 packets of salt courtesy of KFC and soft pedaled to the Special Needs turn around. The cramps never came back. I did however dismount at the aid station further down the road to pee, massage my foot, and stretch out my back, cost me 5 minutes.

Britt caught me at the Yellow Lake aid station and we chatted for a few minutes.She hung back a little, hoping her hubby Antonio would catch up as he had flatted. I sped on into town easing up at the airport and cruised into T2 in 7:03:00 The first 90k was good for me but the last 90k needs some work. The bike shorts worked out - no pain there, but my lower back was very tired and sore.

T2 was slow, 11:48, no explanation for that.

I started out for OK Falls with a sore back and unable to jog. I knew that by the top of Main Street Hill I would be able to run some and it turned out that way. Britt and Toni passed me by Starbucks and I took their picture. Larry caught me by the Peach and we jogged down to the Sicamous when I had to let him go. He finished 30 mins ahead of me. My walk / jog routine got me in by 10:13pm and could be an hour faster if my feet didn’t get sore. I changed sox at mile 16 but it didn’t help much. If I can solve that one I will approach sub-14 I’m sure. Next year.

Libor and Andy were waiting at the finish line. I got a shout and a wave from Larry and felt good enough to drive the 2hours home to my own bed, skipping the prize dinner Monday night, but deciding between a plate of pasta, sleeping in the car for a third night and being at home on Monday didn’t seem like a tuffie.

More thoughts later.

Monday, August 13, 2007

The Dukie Ride

Every August 12 since 1997 I do the Dukie Bike Ride in memory of my faithful mutt who died that day ten years ago.
At first, the ride was a way of coping with his loss, instead of just sitting around bawling my eyes out. Now it is a pleasurable remembrance of a creature I will miss for the rest of my days.


PoC
2 weeks to IMC

Friday, August 3, 2007

An Attitude is a tool not an ornament.

Whether you think your are suffering or you don't, you're probably right.

It's an attitude, and you get to choose your attitudes.

Choosing the attitude that helps you achieve your goals is part of the mental game - a part of sports, business and life in general.

Choose, "I am strong, I am light, I run like the pond skater skipping across the lily-pads" (pick your own phrasing) and you are more likely to endure the discomfort associated with running 30,000 strides over 42kms than if you choose the attitude,
"My feet hurt, my back aches, I can't do this!"

It is common sense really. Norman Cousins famously spoke about the language we use when talking about suffering with terminally ill cancer patients. He noted how the phrasing affected the attitudes of the patients - either positively, or negatively. Of course we should choose the positive approach every time. The point here is that our "attitudes" must per force be couched in language, therefore choose positive language. We think in words. Words affect how we feel. Connect the dots.

Saturday, July 21, 2007

Immigration or racism?

If, as some CBC listeners have urged in their phone in responses, the Canadian government offered greater incentives to Canadian citizens to have larger families, rather than, say, increasing immigration quotas from an already huge 250,000 per year, would their actions be considered racist?

Wouldn't it be a statement to Canadians that although we need more people to sustain our economy and our tax base of working age citizens, we would rather have the population remain the same ethnic mix it is currently. In other words, let's have more Canadian kids rather than have to import foreigners.

It makes more sense to me to increase the numbers of qualified immigrants who would be ready to go to work right now and therefore to pay taxes right away, than to pay money to people to have babies which will have a higher cost to our taxpayers in terms of health care as they are birthed and negotiate childhood and incur education costs too.

There are qualified medical people: doctors, nurses, as well as teachers, who cannot get a job here and are wasting their skills in menial jobs, who would be able to make a greater contribution to Canada if they were allowed to practice the profession for which they were trained wherever they grew up before they emigrated.

The risk the government takes in accepting an immigrant under the current rules is that a qualified immigrant can sponsor an unqualified immigrant, usually an aging and ailing parent, who immediately seeks out a medical clinic and avails themselves of free (or at least, subsidized) health care. So why not let the qualified ones get a good-paying job in their chosen profession, earn a good salary and pay more taxes?

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Tuesday July 17

The Canadian census figures from 2006 have now been released and the radio talk shows, media etc. are now analyzing them.

They speak with a tone of surprise that Kelowna, in the Okanagan valley, is the oldest city on average in Canada.

Hardly surprising when it has been known for decades that the Okanagan with its terrific climate and great scenery is one of the best places in Canada to retire.
So folks from across Canada, now with the money to choose where to retire, have chosen to move to the Okanagan to live out the rest of their days. Of course they chose Kelowna of the three communities because of the superior medical facilities here.

Since they have driven up the property prices, young families can't afford property here, so the average age rises. Pretty obvious, huh?

And these guys on the radio are talking as if it's now a big surprise!
Governments! Idiots!

We've all seen it coming for generations.

My Great, Grandfather bought land here in the early years of the last century and his children grew orchards there.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Summer's Here in the Okanagan

and I'm 48 days from Ironman Canada - my fourth ironman triathlon.
So I'm runnin', riding and swimmin' like a fiend. Nice work if you can get it.

My training log is here.

http://www.okbizpromotions.com/2007IMC.html

for anyone who wants to see the details of my training, how much this and that and where, etc.

I live in a lovely part of the world so it is a joy to train here and so hard to resist the urge to get out on the bike or hit the lake oin a sunny afternoon.

This is what I live for.

Friday, June 29, 2007

Supreme Court upholds ban on Tobacco Ads

Because it has been shown that tobacco - smoking, chewing, 2nd hand smoke - is detrimental to public health and costs taxpayers through health problems treated under medicare.

Automobiles pollute the atmosphere - undisputed.
Autos produce greenhouse gases - undisputed.
People die in auto accidents - undisputed.
Autos consume valuable, irreplaceable oil stocks - undisputed.
People only buy huge pick-up trucks and muscle cars because of the image created in TV ads - probable, but companies buying strictly for business purposes aren't likely to be swayed by TV ads during the Super Bowl or Monday night Football broadcasts, are they?

Isn't it about time we banned automobile advertising because it is detrimental to the health of the planet and all who live on it?

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Vancouver wants to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 1/3

That's easy. All they have to do is turn down the lights - street lights that is.
Street lights are by far the greatest single electricity use in a city, more than any single industry.

Can city dwellers learn to live with a little less illumination?
It's that, or live with the consequences of global warming.
In addition, leaving the lights on just burns up existing fuel suppllies that much faster, hastening the end of the petrochemical age.

Calgary has in motion a plan to replace all their street lights, currently, those yellow sodium vapour beauties, with low wattage LED bulbs. They expect to recover the capital cost of the new bulbs with electricity savings as the program is completed in two or three years.

Ironically, Calgary buys electricty generated by burning coal while Vancouver uses Hydro-generated power.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

A Letter to the Editor

The Editor,
Glenn Mitchell,
The Morning Star,
4407 – 25th Ave.
Vernon, BC.

June, 25th, 2007

Dear Sir,

Re: June17, 2007 - Federal Tories sponsor car #29 at Mosport.


No Government can be taken seriously when speaking about reducing greenhouse gas emissions, dealing with global warming or dealing with the depletion of oil stocks, when its members also endorse NASCAR racing.
At Sunday’s NASCAR Canadian Tire Series event at Mosport (Ontario), Federal Tories, including Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley, sponsored car #29 – a Dodge Charger driven by Pierre Bourque.
NASCAR is a circus, which has one purpose – to promote the sale of high-powered engines, and petroleum products consumed rapaciously by those engines. The byproducts are greenhouse gases and noise, so really it is a good mix for politicians.

If you care about the environment, these are not the people you want in parliament enacting laws and spending our tax dollars.

Source:
http://www.dianefinley.ca/EN/5922/56716
http://www.frontstretch.com/otherpr/9919/

Monday, June 18, 2007

I watched CNN this morning at about 8:30am. It consisted of footage of flash flooding damage in Texas, destruction in the Middle East, deaths and injuries from street drag racing and other mayhem, all sponsored by car commercials.
We don’t need to see the misery and suffering of people in Texas since nothing we can do can prevent it, unless you think flash-flooding is worse because of human-caused climate change.
We don’t need to see the dead bodies on the street and hear the panicked commentary from observers who watched the dragster careen off the telephone pole and into a crowd of spectators – unless you think banning drag racing and other auto sport would help ease human-caused climate change.
We don’t need to see the death and misery in the Middle East either, unless you think that it is caused by war over petroleum deposits which may be themselves the cause of human-caused climate change.
And least of all do we need to see the commercials for a Dodge Ram 3500 truck or super-fast, fun-to-drive sports cars which are, beyond doubt, contributing to climate change.

Btw, the Federal Tories just sponsored a Dodge Charger stock car in a Canadian NASCAR race at Mosport on the past weekend. Now that's government leadership!

******

Mylifebits
Gordon Bell, genius researcher at Microsoft in San Francisco is fastidiously recording his whole life, or at least all his e-mails, correspondence, papers, books, photos, in part because memory is so cheap now – a tera-byte hard drive goes for about $500 retail. This may relieve him of having to remember a “bunch of stuff.”

******

June 18th 2007 - CBC
Bruce Party of Queen’s University, Economic Law, said – no point to Kyota. It requires a Global Treaty, including major contributing polluters.
“We still live in an industrial civilization. The major feature of an industrial civilization is that.. economic activity is related to use of fossil fuels. .. Economic prosperity is directly linked to fossil-fuel use.”

A subsidy-free energy market.

Changing to more energy efficient light bulbs is a waste of time and energy, and because it distracts us from the problem by making us think that we are helping, it harms us. Get rid of the notion that you can solve climate change by nickel and diming your way towards Kyoto.

The premise of Kyoto is way off base. Developing countries must be allowed to catch up.”

That is racial suicide.

India and China produce hugely more greenhouse gases than Canada.
Perhaps a brutal example would serve to illustrate:
Reducing Canada’s per capita emissions by 50% by 2050 would be the equivalent of removing half the population or about 16 million people.

If Canadians produce 4 times more, no let’s be generous, say five times more greenhouse gas than Chinese, then to match Canada’s cuts under Kyoto, China would have to lose 80 million people. Then we would made equal sacrifices towards solving the problem. However, to put this in perpective, Canada would then have a population of 16 million people (about what we had in 1957,) while China’s population would have been reduced from a current 1,400 million people (1.4B) to a paltry 1,320 million people (1.32B)

******

Global warming has the potential to cause World War Three.
China, India and other developing countries aren’t going to give up their dream of a life like we have in the West. They want fridges and stoves and air conditioning and the freedom granted by automobiles. This development of industrial economies means the increased use of energy. They will not refrain from using coal, oil, natural gas as fuels.

Oil resources are increasingly scarcer, DAY-BY-DAY, as we have passed peak oil production in the world.

http://www.hubbertpeak.com/


They will fight over control of these resources, JUST AS THE USA IS DOING NOW in the Middle East.

Tensions will escalate. Politicians and dictators alike will see that they have nothing to lose by using military force. Some will use tactical nuclear weapons. The consequences of this can be imagined by anyone who has watched the Middle East power struggle since Israel was established in 1948.

******

White #29 car sponsored by Federal Conservatives – Idiots. This will go down as yet another huge political blunder by the Federal Conservatives. Not only does it clearly signal that they have no interest in achieving goals defined under the Kyoto accord because nothing could more clearly demonstrate a complete disregard for the value of oil as the profligate waste symbolized by motor sport. NASCAR celebrates the global warming crisis and their complete ignorance of the crisis by burning up hundreds of gallons of precious petroleum products in a two-hour long spectacle of high-powered cars uselessly, racing around an oval. The whole point of which is to sell more high-powered, gas-guzzling automobiles. What could be a more despicable display of carbon fuel waste?
Our politicians really know how to pick their causes.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/story/2007/06/18/conservatives-nascar.html

******

7 Canadian children were saved from a kiddy-porn ring along with 24 other children.
24 people were arrested.
This sting / arrest / investigation cost the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of dollars, during which time thousands of children starved to death in Sudan and dozens of corrupt criminals profited by diverting UN supplies into black market sales.
7 children were killed yesterday in Afghanistan during fighting.

Dozens of homeless were put out on the streets by the closing of a shelter.


******

Nuclear plant to be built in Grande Prairie region.

To produce hot water to loosen up oil shale deposits west of the Alberta Tarsands a nuclear power plant will be built in that region. Oil will become increasingly valuable as a source of lubricants and for chemicals produced from petroleum beyond its use as cheap fuel.

******

John Mighton, The End of Ignorance, released today.
Kids have much more ability in math than it appears.
jumpmath.org


******


First Global Warming Lawsuit Filed Against Government of Canada
29 May 2007

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Saturday June 16th

Last evening, Friday, I rode the bike out to Armstrong to Eileen's house 27kms at 29kph.
It was calm, clear, mild, perfect for a bike ride.

This morning, I rode the bike 47kms from Armstrong to Vernon via the Yankee Flats store.
Sunny day to start, no wind, perfect for the bike ride.
Then 30 minutes after I got to Vernon it started to rain. Bummer.
I was looking forward to a dip in the lake then a few hours of work to make some money, but I wussed out of visiting prospective clients in the downpour.
Maybe I'm not cut out for riches.
As Gertrude Stein said,
"Of course I want to be rich,
I just don't want to do what there is to do to become rich."

Thursday, June 14, 2007

World Fresh Water Crisis

"Twenty-two countries in Africa are without [safe drinking] water. People just have no access. South Africa is in very, very serious trouble. [In] many parts of Latin America, although there is water, the ordinary people have no access to water unless they're wealthy. Mexico City is running out of water; the whole Mexican Valley is in serious trouble. China is paying for its economic miracle, becoming the economic superpower of the world, so-called, by destroying its water tables. Two thirds of the cities in northern China are now in severe water scarcity situations. Seventy-five percent of all of India's rivers and waterways are polluted beyond use, as are 80 percent of China's."

"To me, this water crisis is the comet. It's here. … [T]he human family, the Earth is about to experience a water crisis of monumental proportions. It is, in my opinion, the worst, most frightening environmental threat that exists, more than climate change, more than the oceans, more than anything. This is the one."

Source: Maude Barlow, Chairperson of the Council of Canadians
November 5, 2004

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/01/0111_041105_maude_barlow.html

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Daughter of Erin

Called a meddlesome witch by the Brits,
this black-haired beauty, pride of County Claire,
this daughter of Erin, this Nightingale,
stole the heart of young William whose air
praised her walk, and the stones beneath her feet.
She cast off the crone
to stride as a Queen,
did young Kathleen.
But Billy did not win her hand; this water hyacinth,
with her labyrinthine lust,
and in-your-face politics,
did time in Holloway,
her youth martyred by an unjust Crown.
Iseult, and Geroges, by Lucien,
gave silent testimony to the strength
of her patriotism. Though she lost her husband
and her youth to British greed and cruelty,
she gave it willingly. Now interred in Glasnevin,
with Pearse and Plunkett,
her beauty is her legacy.



This poem about Maude Gonne, the unrequited love of William Butler Yeats, I have posted in response to Library Princess's post of a poem about Yeats by W.H.Auden.
Oh, btw, I wrote it, for whatever that is worth.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Coal’s Knockout Blow To Kyoto:

“By 2012, expected cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions under the Kyoto treaty will be swamped by emissions from a surge of new coal-fired plants built in China, India, and the United States.”

SOURCES: UDI-PLATT'S, US ENERGY INFORMATION ADMINISTRATION, AND INDUSTRY ESTIMATES; SCOTT WALLACE – STAFF

The desire for profit is overwhelming the desire to produce clean electricity.
China is planning the construction of 562 coal-fired generating plants by 2012. They will use traditional “dirty” coal-burning technology. There is no economic incentive to use Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) technology which extracts sulphur and CO2 before it goes up the stack - but which plants cost 15%-25% more than traditional, less efficient, designs.

India is planning 213 similar plants and the US 72 plants.

Kyoto countries by that year are supposed to have cut their CO2 emissions by some 483 million tons by 2012. These 850 new plants will produce about 2.7 billion tons of CO2.

This alone peels the death knell of Kyoto agreements.

The cover story on this month’s Discover magazine asks, Can the world survive the return to coal?

If IGCC technology is employed in the pre-burning phase AND if efficient emissions scrubbers are used at the exhaust phase, coal-fired electricity generation plants could replace petroleum fueled plants, thus deferring the energy crisis another 250 years based on current coal reserve estimates, BUT currently there is no incentive to do this. They will build dirty ones anyway because the consumer demands electricity to power their fridges, TVs, washers & dryers, next their hybrid cars and, oh yes, the streetlights!

Better invest in companies manufacturing SCUBA gear!
Cf, John Brunner’s dystopic masterpiece: Stand On Zanzibar.

Additional sources:
http://www.engineerlive.com/european-process-engineer/17475/and3625-trillion-investment-in-new-coalfired-plants.thtml

Monday, June 11, 2007

Reason #2 why US / Canada won't be Kyoto compliant anytime soon!

The City of Calgary is currently replacing its streetlights with low – wattage bulbs citing the following:

"Energy prices reached an all time high in
January 2001. The streetlight system is
The City's single largest electricity
consumer. The City needed to find a way
to reduce costs in operating the streetlight
system. By going to lower wattage fixtures,
we will use less energy which will help
keep operating costs down. Using less
electricity reduces the greenhouse gas
emissions from gas and coal-burning
generators. When all the residential
streetlights have been replaced, carbon
dioxide emissions will be reduced by
approximately 16,000 tonnes a year."

Source:http://www.calgary.ca/docgallery/BU/roads/streetlights/pamphlet.pdf.

Commendable. However..

At the same time we must recognize the growth that is taking place in cities not only in North America but also the rest of the world. The world when viewed from space is spectacular. We see cities lit up at night for security reasons, glowing brightly. 90% (or some large number) of the populace is sleeping. We are lighting the cityscape for the criminals and the security forces employed to protect us against them.

As the quote form the City of Calgary above notes:

"The streetlight system is the City's single largest electricity
consumer."

The SINGLE LARGEST CONSUMER of electricity is the streetlight system. Security of property and persons is undeniably an important concern, and not until the devastation implied by global warming is realized will citizens and property owners act to turn out the lights. Only when they have weighed the relative costs inherent in the two scenarios will they act.

Worse, 90% of electricity in Alberta is produced by burning COAL.

On the one hand there is the actual cost of loss to property through break-ins under cover of darkness, and other night time crimes, including muggings, etc.

On the other hand is the more widespread and insidious costs of global warming, such as higher food costs, water shortages, losses due to fires (uncontrolled because of water shortages) and so on. Actually the list is extensive but space prevents me listing all of them here.

At present, you can sleep soundly in Calgary because you can park your new SUV under a streetlight where it will be safe – thieves prefer to steal cars parked under cover of darkness. Of course if you didn't drive a gas-guzzling, CO2 emitting monster in the first place, and went to bed at a decent hour you wouldn't need the street lights in the first place. But that would be a lifestyle change wouldn't it?

Only when it is realized that ignoring global warming will cost more than keeping the lights burning all night will people be willing to turn out the night lights and return to what it was like in the 19th century – when there were only 1 or 2 billion people on the planet. Overpopulation is an intrinsic part of the climate change / global warming problem, but that's for another post, another day.

Friday, June 8, 2007

Kyoto is a Fraud

Global Energy Crisis: Why the US won't play along.

Worried voices can be heard around the world these days, speaking in strident tones about the horrors of climate change. They demand that the G8+5 summit in Heleigendamm next month for example, be about action, action taken to reduce carbon emissions by forced agreement. The U.S. is balking at this saying that remedies must take the form of technological solutions rather than by forced measures.

The American position is understandable enough, given that their economy would suffer dramatically if carbon-reduction measures were forced on it. The U.S. is top dog in the world at the moment and it would be foolish to think that they will give that up without a fight. Isn't that exactly what they are proving in Iraq and Afghanistan? While the military action in the Middle East is ostensibly and idealogical conflict fought against the bogey-man of the "terrorist," and while nobody is saying it, the real reson why the U.S. is there and why they aren't leaving anytime soon, maybe never, is oil. Peak oil production in the continental U.S. was reached in 1969 (see Hubbert report: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil) and world oil production is predicted to be reached by 2010. This means the cost of retrieving each barrel of oil from then on is going to become increasingly more difficult and expensive, so the value of oil reserves that are relatively easy and cheap become more valuable. They lie in the Arab countries of the Middle East. No superpower can afford to let those reserves fall under the complete control of regimes antagonistic to their cultural agenda.

The American cultural agenda can be read by viewing the commercial messages aired every 15 minutes on network television. It is an agenda of motor vehicles using petroleum products, drugs derived from petroleum and other products from plastic disposable diapers to processed foods derived from or packaged in plastics, themselves derived from petroleum products.

The voices heard around the world should be worried. Americans aren't giving up their suburban lifestyle anytime soon. And the alternative is worse.

Coal gas has long been known as a source of energy, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and chemicals necessary to industry. Many regions produce their electricity by burning coal. Any reduction in the use of petroleum products will likely result in an increase of coal usage. Coal burning produces more greenhouse gases than does burning oil. In addition it is higher in sulphur and other deadly pollutants.

But back to the U.S. and global warming.
The threat assessment of global warming has included: disruptive weather in the form of violent storms, flooding, wind damage, altered growing seasons leading to crop failures, even long-lasting drought. None of these threats are greater in the minds of the White House and the American people, than the thought of the end of the era of the automobile. It is a nation founded on personal freedoms and the automobile has become the over-riding symbol of that freedom. To be unable to "get away" from your problems by going for a drive, or unable to go visit a loved one anytime you feel like it, or to have access to a resource (like food) simply by hopping in your vehicle and going to get it, is anathema to the American way of thinking, and contra-indicated by their whole social planning strategy, centred as it is, on suburban living. They would rather give up unassisted breathing than give up their automobiles, and that is exactly what they will be doing if they start using coal as an alternative source of fuel. People in Taiwan and mainland China wear surgical masks as they walk down the city streets or travel by motor scooter about their daily lives, because the air is harmful to breathe. This is the fate of North American cities. Like the frog boiling gradually in the pot of water as the heat is turned up, we, the citizens of North America, just like those in Asia, will asphyxiate ourselves before we give up the automobile and its associated freedoms.

Therefore, we may conclude that the U.S. government will not untertake ant action that will mean the reduction in the use of the personal vehicle by its citizens. The dynamic isn't as simple as the political rhetoric: we serve the people and they want their cars. It is more subtle. The government, any government, exists to serve its dominant class (see John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards for a fuller exposition). In the Western nations and increasingly throughout the world the dominant class has become the corporation. The corporations sell goods and services and influence the government with huge amounts of cash and considerations at the personal, party and public levels as well as intense lobbying by highly proficient professionals. These corporate interests profit by pandering to the tastes of the multitudes without regard to their direct well-being. The corporation after all is designed to look after the well being of only one group: their stockholders, and the stockholders typically want only one thing: profit.

Technological solutions to the coming oil shortage will be found. Given that massive profits can be had by pandering to the comforts of the masses as in cheap, personal transportation, the solutions likley won't be "Green", ie. Friendly to the environment, polar bears and such. However, declining air quality has a more insidious effect. In Silent Spring, Rachel Carson warned of the disaster awaiting us as rampant insecticide use meant declini9ng bird and non-harmful insect populations. Recently reports of honeybee population decline has agricultural experts worried as the bees are the best, maybe the only effective, long term means of pollinating plants, the stuff we eat. Food production can be affected more drastically by a scarcity of insects than by erratic weather. Air pollution kills insects – the good kinds- and that starves the birds and that affects humans in ways perhaps not yet understood.

The overwhelming message seems to be: ya gotta give up the cars, and the consumptive lifestyle that goes with it. But the automobile itself, or rather, the internal combustion engine, is not the problem. It is the plenitude of them. In 1850 there were only one billion humans on the planet. Today there are 6.7 billion humans. If population had stalled at say 1920 levels when the automobile began its heyday, global warming wouldn't even be a topic of idle discussion. And even if we were to reduce the greenhouse gas production per capita by 50% not the 10% or 20% talked about by Kyoto, it won't make a bit of difference to climate change since that takes decades but it will take only one more lifetime for the population to double to 12 billion people (estimates vary, some predict 11 billion by 2050.)

Let me say that again,

even if you halve the greenhouse gas output per capita, it means nothing to global warming if the population doubles.

Will the population double before we have technological solutions to transporrtation needs, flora and fauna preservation issues and catastrophic weather phenomena?

update

Okay, so I haven't blogged lately.
I've been busy.
It's June 8th.
Since January I have been in a play and a drama festival - we received 4 awards including best ensemble cast - from Jeff Hyslop (Phantom of the Opera)
I was part of a team that won the BC Provincial Basketball Championships M55+
I've been training for Ironman Canada 2007 on Aug 26th.
Playing tennis twice a week.
Haven't written a thing, well a few things, but not much.
Okay I'll post one now.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Something about romac's latest post inspired this poem - if that nomenclature is deserved.

First Lines


Tragedy is a funny thing,
The moment you meet, you know
There will be an ending,
As inevitable as a sunset,
Whether it is a birth, a prang,
New Year’s Eve, in an elevator,
On the road, in a saloon or a graveyard,
And the things you say,
That just pop into your head:
"That’s a lovely hat; it suits the shape of your face,"
I love that colour on you; it makes your eyes so arresting,"
"Nice shoes; wanna fuck?"
seem so melancholy when they become nostalgic.
No laughter, not a belly-laugh, a guffaw,
nor even a chuckle
can dispel the sadness that settles on the mind,
like a cloak of night, soft, even, smothering, numbing,
- all hues diluted into shades of gray,
by time, emotional overload, ennui
like the taste of coffee grown cold on the windowsill
in the light of an overcast morning,
sweet, sticky, sickening – like blood on rain-slickened pavement,
never able to satisfy a longing for the warm, musky smell
of her rain-dampened hair
nor recall a single instant of joy,
nor ease the bowel-watering, lip-trembling pain,
funny peculiar, not funny ha-ha.



Bander