Looks from the polls like another Conservative government for the next 4 or 5 years.
The Greens & NDP are squabbling over who cares the most about the environment. Voters seem to be leaning towards whichever party thay think will protect their money the best. The urge to self-preservation for the short term, the immediate future, is the strongest motivation.
It irritates me no end that they twitter about a carbon tax and a cap & trade program as if this is a realistic solution The irritation stems from their attitude that Canadian voters are too stupid to know the difference or that neither plan has a hope in Hell of succeeding. And that they are probably right about how ignorant your average joe is. The government ought to know since they were part of the conspiracy to keep the masses poor and ignorant in the first place.
Deplorable efforts at making the schools effective or maintaining conditions where teaching professionals could make them more efficient, miserably low expectations of performance and shocking rewards system for underachievement all resulting in masses that are too incompetent to compete on a world stage, & too stupid to realize that they have been duped by the elite & betrayed by their elected representatives at the expense of the well-to-do classes.
I probably won't bother watching the election results sham tomorrow, since Canadian TV is banned from reporting the results in the East before polls close in the west, but American stations will carry the news anyway, besides isn't there the internet? We will read election results in Newfoundland immediately the polls close on some Newfy's Blog 3.5 hours before polls close in Vancouver.
Geoff
Monday, October 13, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Any carbon tax in Canada is a waste of time..
as long as gas flaring continues in the oil producing industry.
"Gas flares emit about 390 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, and experts say eliminating global flaring alone would curb more CO2 emissions than all the projects currently registered under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism."
- from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12175714
Should I stop driving my 3-cyclinder Suzuki hatchback to work even on cold, rainy days, instead riding my bike 25kms one way to cut down the size of my carbon footprint, and pay a carbon tax of 2.5 cents a litre of gasoline to my provincial government while they do nothing about the gas flaring going on around the world "because there is no local demand for the natural gas to make it economical (read "profitable") to the oil companies?
"Oil is a mainstay of Nigeria's economy, and the government acknowledges that the oil industry still flares 24 billion cubic meters of gas a year, enough to power a good portion of Africa for a whole year."
(or enough to power all of British Columbia for 5 weeks!)
Gas flares burn in Nigeria adjacent to houses that have no electricity. Why? because the residents are too poor to be able to buy the electricity in the first place. Why? because the oil revenues from the industry that is killing them are not shared by the citizens of the country:
"In the areas close to the gas flares, medical staff report treating patients with all sorts of illnesses that they believe are related to the flames: bronchial, chest, rheumatic and eye problems, among others."
Instead, the ruling junta lines their own pockets corruptly with millions from the profits of allowing the Oil Corporations to drill there, flaring off gas in contempt of Government regs. banning the practice.
The oil is shipped to Europe and the US market to power SUVs, power plants and generally to support the developed lifestyle of the first world.
What do I say? It's a dog-eat-dog world and we are winning the fight?
I don't see the green revolution succeeding, at all, ever.
Bander
"Gas flares emit about 390 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, and experts say eliminating global flaring alone would curb more CO2 emissions than all the projects currently registered under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism."
- from http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12175714
Should I stop driving my 3-cyclinder Suzuki hatchback to work even on cold, rainy days, instead riding my bike 25kms one way to cut down the size of my carbon footprint, and pay a carbon tax of 2.5 cents a litre of gasoline to my provincial government while they do nothing about the gas flaring going on around the world "because there is no local demand for the natural gas to make it economical (read "profitable") to the oil companies?
"Oil is a mainstay of Nigeria's economy, and the government acknowledges that the oil industry still flares 24 billion cubic meters of gas a year, enough to power a good portion of Africa for a whole year."
(or enough to power all of British Columbia for 5 weeks!)
Gas flares burn in Nigeria adjacent to houses that have no electricity. Why? because the residents are too poor to be able to buy the electricity in the first place. Why? because the oil revenues from the industry that is killing them are not shared by the citizens of the country:
"In the areas close to the gas flares, medical staff report treating patients with all sorts of illnesses that they believe are related to the flames: bronchial, chest, rheumatic and eye problems, among others."
Instead, the ruling junta lines their own pockets corruptly with millions from the profits of allowing the Oil Corporations to drill there, flaring off gas in contempt of Government regs. banning the practice.
The oil is shipped to Europe and the US market to power SUVs, power plants and generally to support the developed lifestyle of the first world.
What do I say? It's a dog-eat-dog world and we are winning the fight?
I don't see the green revolution succeeding, at all, ever.
Bander
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Built at Last!
I rode my new steed 182kms to Oliver last Friday.
It lived up to expectations and performed flawlessly,
except for 3 flats in the city of Kelowna - none out on the highway.
Stiff and aerodynamic, she will undoubtedly be 10 to 15% more efficient, saving me time and energy come raceday.
bander
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
April was National Poetry Month in Canada
and to celebrate it in an active fashion I wrote 30 poems as part of NaPoWriMo on www.pffa.org
This is the third time I have done this and I feel the results were worthy of the effort. I have many good drafts that can be worried into poem-like states. It was amusing and mind-expanding. I had a theme: poems on the variation of "She Stoops To Conquer."
It is a comedy wr9tten by Oliver Goldsmith. The idea came unbidden to me as I typed up my first poem April first and I wondered if I could sustain the theme and write meaningful poetry. The puns in the titles eroded considerably before long but placed in a list readers could at least see where the sometimes obscure titles came from, eg. She Swaps the Reefer - about a woman who wanted a mini-van like the other soccer moms but who was obliged to drive a refrigerated semi-tractor to pick up her kids, until one happy day..
Anyway, it provided some amusement for me and my fellows.
This summer I am training for my fifth Ironman Triathlon August 24th in Penticton. I have a new bike, stiff, fast, sexy - and currently in pieces on the ground. I have to build it. I have received contributions of parts: gears, aerobars, brakes, wheels from friends around the continent: CA, PA, WA, and hope to race it this w/e on a Century ride - a fund raiser for Cancer research I think.
The bike looks like this at the mo:
and should look like this:
Soon.
G.
This is the third time I have done this and I feel the results were worthy of the effort. I have many good drafts that can be worried into poem-like states. It was amusing and mind-expanding. I had a theme: poems on the variation of "She Stoops To Conquer."
It is a comedy wr9tten by Oliver Goldsmith. The idea came unbidden to me as I typed up my first poem April first and I wondered if I could sustain the theme and write meaningful poetry. The puns in the titles eroded considerably before long but placed in a list readers could at least see where the sometimes obscure titles came from, eg. She Swaps the Reefer - about a woman who wanted a mini-van like the other soccer moms but who was obliged to drive a refrigerated semi-tractor to pick up her kids, until one happy day..
Anyway, it provided some amusement for me and my fellows.
This summer I am training for my fifth Ironman Triathlon August 24th in Penticton. I have a new bike, stiff, fast, sexy - and currently in pieces on the ground. I have to build it. I have received contributions of parts: gears, aerobars, brakes, wheels from friends around the continent: CA, PA, WA, and hope to race it this w/e on a Century ride - a fund raiser for Cancer research I think.
The bike looks like this at the mo:
and should look like this:
Soon.
G.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Wanna cut the carbon? Cut the Crap!
Environmentalists are blowing smoke up the wrong orifices.
One truth is that “incentive based program” will not reduce the distance between Calgary and Edmonton or between Saskatoon and Regina. We live in a big country.
Better they should put their efforts into finding means to reduce world population.
There are a number of ways of conceiving this:
For example, a ten per cent reduction on a large amount is more effective than achieving a 10% reduction of a small amount. Specifically, reduce the emissions of the petroleum industry by 10% and you save a million tonnes. Reduce one person’s emissions by 10% you achieve next to nothing by comparison.
Hardships
While not without benefits, personal carbon emissions reduction may induce hardships on individuals. Such reductions may increase costs without increasing income for individuals.
Whereas industry will actually benefit by becoming more efficient and even more profitable.
Secondly, a large polluter can more easily sustain a significant reduction than can a small polluter.
The petroleum industry can sustain the changes without blinking. An individual citizen would experience drastic, unpleasant changes in their lives by an equivalent reduction.
In human terms, the aggressive reduction of personal pollution may mean fewer family visits, living in colder houses, wearing old clothes rather than buying new ones, eating more expensive foods perhaps, generally having a poorer lifestyle.
Think Globally
Another truth is that there are only 33 million Canadians, while there are 2,500 million people in China and India, which are rapidly industrializing – something we cannot morally ask them to arrest.
Think globally not locally. Canadian emissions are trivial when compared to the total emissions of a country like China, despite the fact that Chinese citizens produce one fifth the emissions per capita.
The government has proposed reducing Canadian emissions by 50% by 2050.
One way would be to reduce the number of Canadians by 50% or 16 million people.
If each Canadian did nothing different, the result would be the same: 50% reduced emissions.
While fantastic, it reveals an interesting fact. Chinese per capita emissions are estimated to be one fifth that of Canadians. To match a population reduction of 16 million in Canada by 2050, China would only need to reduce its projected population in 2050 by 80 millions, a five to one ratio. As was demonstrated in Korea, the social experiment of giving young women a college education will, by itself, reduced the birth rate. If this were done in China (and India, and Africa for that matter) the reduction in population alone would achieve the intended goal.
Of course Canada is not able to reduce its 2050 population by 16 million people, but China can easily do it.
Which is more achievable: Canadians reducing their carbon emissions by 50% or the education of women throughout the world?
World Population is projected to increase from 6.5B in 2007 to 9.4Billion in 2050.
Reducing our emissions today by 50% per capita will only sustain current emissions output by 2050!!!
All talk of carbon emissions reduction is crap without discussion of population control.
Some references:
Carbon Emissions per capita
Population Projections for 2050
One truth is that “incentive based program” will not reduce the distance between Calgary and Edmonton or between Saskatoon and Regina. We live in a big country.
Better they should put their efforts into finding means to reduce world population.
There are a number of ways of conceiving this:
For example, a ten per cent reduction on a large amount is more effective than achieving a 10% reduction of a small amount. Specifically, reduce the emissions of the petroleum industry by 10% and you save a million tonnes. Reduce one person’s emissions by 10% you achieve next to nothing by comparison.
Hardships
While not without benefits, personal carbon emissions reduction may induce hardships on individuals. Such reductions may increase costs without increasing income for individuals.
Whereas industry will actually benefit by becoming more efficient and even more profitable.
Secondly, a large polluter can more easily sustain a significant reduction than can a small polluter.
The petroleum industry can sustain the changes without blinking. An individual citizen would experience drastic, unpleasant changes in their lives by an equivalent reduction.
In human terms, the aggressive reduction of personal pollution may mean fewer family visits, living in colder houses, wearing old clothes rather than buying new ones, eating more expensive foods perhaps, generally having a poorer lifestyle.
Think Globally
Another truth is that there are only 33 million Canadians, while there are 2,500 million people in China and India, which are rapidly industrializing – something we cannot morally ask them to arrest.
Think globally not locally. Canadian emissions are trivial when compared to the total emissions of a country like China, despite the fact that Chinese citizens produce one fifth the emissions per capita.
The government has proposed reducing Canadian emissions by 50% by 2050.
One way would be to reduce the number of Canadians by 50% or 16 million people.
If each Canadian did nothing different, the result would be the same: 50% reduced emissions.
While fantastic, it reveals an interesting fact. Chinese per capita emissions are estimated to be one fifth that of Canadians. To match a population reduction of 16 million in Canada by 2050, China would only need to reduce its projected population in 2050 by 80 millions, a five to one ratio. As was demonstrated in Korea, the social experiment of giving young women a college education will, by itself, reduced the birth rate. If this were done in China (and India, and Africa for that matter) the reduction in population alone would achieve the intended goal.
Of course Canada is not able to reduce its 2050 population by 16 million people, but China can easily do it.
Which is more achievable: Canadians reducing their carbon emissions by 50% or the education of women throughout the world?
World Population is projected to increase from 6.5B in 2007 to 9.4Billion in 2050.
Reducing our emissions today by 50% per capita will only sustain current emissions output by 2050!!!
All talk of carbon emissions reduction is crap without discussion of population control.
Some references:
Carbon Emissions per capita
Population Projections for 2050
Friday, March 21, 2008
Delta Blues
The world has run down like an old alarm clock and time rattles on towards dawn. Can't sleep no more. Three hours to go now. The wax drips from the lip of the saucer and pools on the table, twin beads polishing shins lying akimbo on the old school desk, adding a lachrymose finish to wood less than antique. I’ve mellowed like the wood in the time since that desk was in my old schoolhouse across the creek and down the road.
I remember hot dry afternoons when I found a cool deep pool under the willow on the way home from school. Hours passed slowly as I watched the flies on the surface of the pedestrian stream, hoping for that mystical moment to be watching just the right fly when a big-mouthed bass would surface and gobble it down, disappearing into the depths like some monster from the Pleistocene, lurking, idly threatening, choosing his moment to rise again.
Dust motes floated on sunbeams penetrating the thick canopy of boughs, and settled among the dead flies and twigs passing on the glassy highway meandering through the county to join the Mississippi and ultimately to flow out into the Gulf by New Orleans, a place I’d heard about in songs that issued from the roadhouse by the crossroads, a place where darkies went to dance, where legends came to play for food and beer and enough money to buy gas to get to the next township, the next roadhouse. all the way from Natches to Mobile, legends like Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy, Son House and Willie Brown, out-of-work black men who packed up their guitars and played wherever they could for any payment whatsoever, forced by the Great Depression to take to the road.
Some of us kids would sit in the shadows of the roadhouse in the dark of a summer’s evening, listening to the magic as it flowed through the high open windows, listening to the stomping of the dancers feet on the floorboards from beneath the building where in the daytime the dogs would crawl to sleep away from the heat of the day. We’d sit there slappin’ our thighs in time with the boogie-woogie back beat and trying to emulate the walking bass line of the musicians inside, while the sky filled with gimlet-sharp stars and clouds of fireflies.
Round the hardware store I heard the old men talk about how David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Johnny Shines used to come to the roadhouse to play and how the party would go on for days and nights, people falling over at work because they had stayed up all night dancing.
It’s been a long time since Charlie Patton, Sunny House and Willie Brown tore up the Delta night around Clarkesville when we were children in our early teens, but the rhythms never leave the blood and the heart is always hearkening home, to where the blues wasn’t just the rhythm of an impoverished populace but more the spiritual sustenance of a way of life, replete with its hardships, its sorrows and its joys, no less than the Gospel music we absorbed on Sundays, yet grittier and more meaningful for its visceral appeal and prurience. We didn’t intellectualize about it, we didn’t worry it this way and that trying to understand it, but we couldn’t let it go. We worried at it, like the tongue worries at popcorn kernels stuck between tooth and gum, irritated but wanting more. To quote Robert Johnson,
I mistreated my baby
and I can’t see no reason why
I mistreated my baby
and I can’t see no reason why
Everytime I think about it,
I just wring my hands and cry.
- 30 -
Robert Johnson, May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938
Father of the Delta Blues
I remember hot dry afternoons when I found a cool deep pool under the willow on the way home from school. Hours passed slowly as I watched the flies on the surface of the pedestrian stream, hoping for that mystical moment to be watching just the right fly when a big-mouthed bass would surface and gobble it down, disappearing into the depths like some monster from the Pleistocene, lurking, idly threatening, choosing his moment to rise again.
Dust motes floated on sunbeams penetrating the thick canopy of boughs, and settled among the dead flies and twigs passing on the glassy highway meandering through the county to join the Mississippi and ultimately to flow out into the Gulf by New Orleans, a place I’d heard about in songs that issued from the roadhouse by the crossroads, a place where darkies went to dance, where legends came to play for food and beer and enough money to buy gas to get to the next township, the next roadhouse. all the way from Natches to Mobile, legends like Robert Johnson and Big Bill Broonzy, Son House and Willie Brown, out-of-work black men who packed up their guitars and played wherever they could for any payment whatsoever, forced by the Great Depression to take to the road.
Some of us kids would sit in the shadows of the roadhouse in the dark of a summer’s evening, listening to the magic as it flowed through the high open windows, listening to the stomping of the dancers feet on the floorboards from beneath the building where in the daytime the dogs would crawl to sleep away from the heat of the day. We’d sit there slappin’ our thighs in time with the boogie-woogie back beat and trying to emulate the walking bass line of the musicians inside, while the sky filled with gimlet-sharp stars and clouds of fireflies.
Round the hardware store I heard the old men talk about how David “Honeyboy” Edwards and Johnny Shines used to come to the roadhouse to play and how the party would go on for days and nights, people falling over at work because they had stayed up all night dancing.
It’s been a long time since Charlie Patton, Sunny House and Willie Brown tore up the Delta night around Clarkesville when we were children in our early teens, but the rhythms never leave the blood and the heart is always hearkening home, to where the blues wasn’t just the rhythm of an impoverished populace but more the spiritual sustenance of a way of life, replete with its hardships, its sorrows and its joys, no less than the Gospel music we absorbed on Sundays, yet grittier and more meaningful for its visceral appeal and prurience. We didn’t intellectualize about it, we didn’t worry it this way and that trying to understand it, but we couldn’t let it go. We worried at it, like the tongue worries at popcorn kernels stuck between tooth and gum, irritated but wanting more. To quote Robert Johnson,
I mistreated my baby
and I can’t see no reason why
I mistreated my baby
and I can’t see no reason why
Everytime I think about it,
I just wring my hands and cry.
- 30 -
Robert Johnson, May 8, 1911 - August 16, 1938
Father of the Delta Blues
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Arthur C. Clarke: Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke,
born 16 December 1917, Died Today at 90, March 18, 2008
[img]http://www.nndb.com/people/725/000023656/clarke-sm.jpg[/img]
Novels
* Prelude to Space (1951)
* The Sands of Mars (1951)
* Islands in the Sky (1952)
* Against the Fall of Night (1953)
* Childhood's End (1953)
* Earthlight (1955)
* The City and the Stars (1956)
* The Deep Range (1957)
* A Fall of Moondust (1961)
* Dolphin Island (1963)
* Glide Path (1963)[b]
* 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)[/b]
* Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
* Imperial Earth (1975)
* The Fountains of Paradise (1979)
* 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
* The Songs of Distant Earth (1986)
* 2061: Odyssey Three (1988)
* A Meeting with Medusa (1988)
* Cradle (1988) (with Gentry Lee)
* Rama II (1989) (with Gentry Lee)
* Beyond the Fall of Night (1990) (with Gregory Benford)
* The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990)
* The Garden of Rama (1991) (with Gentry Lee)
* Rama Revealed (1993) (with Gentry Lee)
* The Hammer of God (1993)
* Richter 10 (1996) (with Mike McQuay)
* 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)
* The Trigger (1999) (with Michael P. Kube-McDowell)
* The Light of Other Days (2000) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Time's Eye (2003) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Sunstorm (2005) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Firstborn (2007) (with Stephen Baxter)
along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, Clarke is considered one of the Big Three of SF.
and one of my childhood, and indeed lifetime, favourites.
Bander
born 16 December 1917, Died Today at 90, March 18, 2008
[img]http://www.nndb.com/people/725/000023656/clarke-sm.jpg[/img]
Novels
* Prelude to Space (1951)
* The Sands of Mars (1951)
* Islands in the Sky (1952)
* Against the Fall of Night (1953)
* Childhood's End (1953)
* Earthlight (1955)
* The City and the Stars (1956)
* The Deep Range (1957)
* A Fall of Moondust (1961)
* Dolphin Island (1963)
* Glide Path (1963)[b]
* 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)[/b]
* Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
* Imperial Earth (1975)
* The Fountains of Paradise (1979)
* 2010: Odyssey Two (1982)
* The Songs of Distant Earth (1986)
* 2061: Odyssey Three (1988)
* A Meeting with Medusa (1988)
* Cradle (1988) (with Gentry Lee)
* Rama II (1989) (with Gentry Lee)
* Beyond the Fall of Night (1990) (with Gregory Benford)
* The Ghost from the Grand Banks (1990)
* The Garden of Rama (1991) (with Gentry Lee)
* Rama Revealed (1993) (with Gentry Lee)
* The Hammer of God (1993)
* Richter 10 (1996) (with Mike McQuay)
* 3001: The Final Odyssey (1997)
* The Trigger (1999) (with Michael P. Kube-McDowell)
* The Light of Other Days (2000) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Time's Eye (2003) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Sunstorm (2005) (with Stephen Baxter)
* Firstborn (2007) (with Stephen Baxter)
along with Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, Clarke is considered one of the Big Three of SF.
and one of my childhood, and indeed lifetime, favourites.
Bander
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