Tag: Nature, Space, Science, Tech

I Hear Some Traitors Get ‘Merican Cable TV, Too

Is there nothing as fraught as a Canadian of any political stripe claiming that we are being manipulated by the United States?

The ammunition for Ottawa’s broadside against the pipeline’s opponents is drawn in part from the work of a relatively little-known blogger from North Vancouver. In the last 15 months, independent blogger and single mother Vivian Krause has become a one-person clearinghouse on how U.S. money is helping finance Canadian environmental activism. Ms. Krause has used her “Fair Questions” blog to document the money trail behind what she calls the “U.S.-funded campaign against Canadian oil” – research that’s been used by defenders of the oil sands, including the lobby group Ethical Oil, to blunt criticism of the tarry resource.

While “ethical oil” is one of the silliest ideas going it’s obviously not as bad as the blood diamonds or blood chocolate of some other energy sources. Yet it sure isn’t so pure as to deserve the label ethical. Let’s just call it “relatively a lot better” oil. That being the case, there is a valid political debate over whether methods of extraction or delivery or price or any number of other things are as good as they might be.

There is a parallel debate going on near here in central New York about another method of extraction, hydro fracking. And there is debate. That is a good thing. But that might be only be a good thing in America. Because, according to the story, folks would “like to see the Gateway pipeline succeed, but after decisions made by Canadians alone.” That’s asbestos logic. There’s money in outsourcing so don’t ask those who have to take on the associated issues. Especially Americans. Because we are generally so dislocated from them, separated. Aren’t we. Makes sense.

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You Fest Of Linky Goodness For Nameless Week

So what do you call the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve? I don’t think of them as the holidays. They are the weeks before the 24th when you spend and spend and spend and spend and spend as if you were in some sort of Bacchanalian cult… oh, well there is that. These days are the days of foreboding. Not of the New Year. But of the New Year’s Eve party. The dark night. Evening of the lost… of the damned. Speaking of the lost and the damned, how unholy a thing it would be to be a journalist this week. Nothing happens, like this:

♦ Who caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaares! Yet it’s is the Glob’s #1 sports story Thursday evening under the heading “The Game Changer.”

♦ Tribe? Remember when the tribes of reel-to-reel rumbled against thos of the 8 track? That’s what this will be like in 25 years.

♦ zzzzzzz…

♦ Even God is getting bored with this person in the news. Sweet touch with the allegation that Ron Paul is corrupt. God’s response: “…of all the things I made Ron Paul to be, you think I needed to throw in corrupt?”

♦ And then there are the Jays. At least the Sox are making trades that I might understand one day.

OK. That’ll do. That’s what you can say about 2011. That’ll do for now.

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Your Weekend Links Of Note For A Day At The Hospital

Efficient. Kind. Relaxed. Excellent. It was a good day at the hospital helping the lad get through what turned out to be a far less onerous than feared experience of an eyeball straightening. More nip than tuck, I have spent longer stretches at the dentist. Shades of my two days long medical stays of my youth disappeared. Validated Kate’s observations, too. Realized that I have sat in small city hospital waiting rooms in Canada, the US and Poland and each time thought pretty good people go into this work. Today, a small “hooray” went up among the post-op nurses at one point. I gave the “what was that face” to one of them and was told “the babies are through.” Hooray for the babies, indeed.

♦ Good to see the students of Syracuse can tell pedophilia from hate crime.

♦ I really hope many of these citizenship investigations are linked to the PEI passport selling scandal. Good to know, by comparison, that some Spuds have some sense.

♦ Boys need this last line of defends. It’s like Cold War MAD – mutually assured destruction. I recall when the bag tag war of 1982 broke out at undergrad. We needed, after only two days, a formal truce.

♦ Seventeen century science is absolutely neato: this and this, too

There. Weekend is here. Tomorrow? A Montreal Gazette weekend edition and maybe an obscure mammal in form of sausage.

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Some Weekender Bullety Points For Yulesight

Yulesight. You can see the holidays coming but you are not quite connected emotionally yet. It was an interesting week. I was slagged in the British media. Beer magazine columnist with a chip on his tiny shoulders. Wrote a complaint to the publisher whose response was that they did not feel, that I in fact had been called a Nazi sympathizer. They did remove the article from the web but you can see it in Google cache all the same. Other than that, it snowed for the first time this winter.

♦

Love the Starbucks coffee cup. We may not be the 1% but we do like 1% partly skimmed milk foam.

♦ The caribou were right where they were told they would be.

♦ EU officials apparently had declared that you could not claim water helped with dehydration: “The euro is burning, the EU is falling apart and yet here they are: highly-paid, highly-pensioned officials worrying about the obvious qualities of water…”

♦ Sadly, more than enough bad to go around.

♦ Hey – there’s another bit of Canada’s national administration being dumped by the Feds – immigration policy: “While other provinces have fully embraced their provincial constitutional responsibility of selecting immigrants … Ontario has effectively abdicated its ability to engage in the immigration dossier in a serious way.”

There. Weekend. Scooby-Doo on the TV. Bailey’s in the coffee.

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Friday Bullets For World Cup Starts Today!

It’s now been a few years since I played soccer. Last World Cup I was all still in the, you know, idea that me and – like – slide tackling was… errr… not stupid. I thought that it was very healthy to have rolled ankles, sprained kneed, black and blue shins not to mention aches and pains. Not just aches. Aches and pains. Fortunately, I have embraced non-fitba member me since then. I’ve found a life after exhaustion, hot baths and aspirins all weekend. And looking like a bee. It’s a great game, though.

  • France and Uruguay this afternoon. I have always liked Uruguay and not just because of the abundance of the letter “u” in the name. Blues v. Blues. Hope the blue team wins.
  • “6 Ways To Overcome Social Media Burnout“? Doesn’t it start with not being a nerd when you are six?
  • Nigel Barley?
  • Canada Posts bans dog treats. Bite, doggie, bite… but aim for management.
  • Someone doesn’t like “food bloggers with their wankerish little digicameras”! And it’s that most useless of creatures – a newspaper food critic. Remember: those who cant’ complain a lot and do their best to keep available funds to themselves.
  • New UK PM apparently is having a hard look at Jean Chretien’s masterful decision to take a stand eighteen or so against deficits. Will he seek Steve’s advice as to how Jean did it?

Wish good luck for South Africa. I have cousins there, grew up in a boycott house, have a great pal who was in the Army and then got away before the changes, lived in towns with Boer War monuments. We should be closer.

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Sign of The Endtimes #2658: Helpful Clothes

Again with the failing cause of the right to idleness illustrated by the lengths that scientists will go to keep us from the benefits of idleness:

Smart clothes could soon be helping their wearers cope with the stresses of modern life. The prototype garments monitor physiological states including temperature and heart rate. The clothes are connected to a database that analyses the data to work out a person’s emotional state. Media, including songs, words and images, are then piped to the display and speakers in the clothes to calm a wearer or offer support.

Will the cause of the stress be analyzed, too? Maybe there is a very good, even pleasurable reason for being hot and bothered? Maybe the person needs to handle such tensions by themselves? By sitting in a chair or having tea. In fact, isn’t tea – cold or hot, sweet or not – the entire low-fi answer to the problem… if there is a problem at all. Are the stresses of modern life beyond coping? Coping at least without an intervention by one’s socks offering support? Have a tea. Have a nap.

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Where The Heck Did That Deer Come From?

Nature can be surprising.

The animal will be watched over by veterinarians and then likely given to the Toronto Zoo, police said. Still, no one knows where it came from. “Obviously, it made its way from Rouge Valley, Humber Valley,” said Supt. Hugh Ferguson. “How? God only knows … GO Train, maybe.”

How odd being a few blogs for Deer-Gate, the great question of how the heck a deer got into Toronto. Funny. When I look out the window of the 26th story where I am sitting, I see woods. And on the map nearby I see ravines and woods and I bet that deer is a downtown Toronto deer of long standing.

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Friday Bullets For…For…Hell, I Don’t Know

Jay came up with a great idea in the comments last night: creditor’s prison. What a clever bunch of civilized Whigs we are. Or are we civic republicans? A veritable moral meritocracy. Gone are the days of comments with “people like you” finger pointery. No, now we are getting to the 18th century heart of things. People can do evil with an idea. The community can be corrupted by improper deal making. Me? I don’t understand to whom all the money is owed and, if it is a great big Ponzi scheme, why such debts are being honoured and not rewritten as unconscionable? If confidence is to be restored surely it will be due to the restoration of proper valuation though the application of equitable principles.

Fine. That is it. By next week we will be mere days from March and March is when baseball starts. It is almost over! Have I mentioned I hate winter? Winter is for people who say “I like to make the most of winter” and, honestly, we know what people think about people who say that.

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Friday Bullets For Your Mid-November

I am finally getting used to the clocks changing. I suppose I am getting used to the Obama victory and maybe even the Harper one, too. Maybe even getting used to not being half my age now that I think of it. Is autumn the season of acceptance? Do we rage or go quietly into these dark nights and mornings? Quietly I think. Placated by the promise of Christmas buffets to come. Visions of heaping plates with both ham and turkey with, yes please, gravy over both. Finding the brussles sprouts with bacon amongst the covered trays.

  • Sometimes I am amazed by the detail and effort given to high school sports coverage in small town America.
  • Speaking of the near and international, who knew about Galloo? You can now own it.
  • One thing I would buy if I could.
  • Remember when the choice was between green shift and the call to be square and prudent? Given the circumstances being foisted, I am not all that uncomfortable with square and prudent. You? But isn’t selling and leasing back a shell game?
  • Iggy. Let us consider Iggy. The Ig-meister. The Iggy-tron. Is there enough new or even known to make him compelling? He certainly wears the clever clogs but wasn’t the last guy a professor, too?
  • Now we know where the aliens who one day will destroy us live.
  • Jay has had enough. He has invented his own right-of-right party and I have to say I approve. The more splintering schizmists the better. Sure I wouldn’t vote for 66% of it but that is not the point. Conservatives have been duped out of the 1980s Preston Manning vision in the wilderness – even now by Preston Manning as far as I can tell – and they have every right to feel ripped off even if the drive to the right proposed will place them exactly back where Preston sat – nowhere’sville.
  • On a related note, isn’t it somewhat comforting that Chretien had the decency not to create a think tank in his name given how little Manning’s is actually being listened to by the new breed of moderat-o-conservatives?
  • Has Ian got a point?

I offered to make lunch for a meeting tomorrow that had been set for 18-20 but which is looking like 45 now. I am a church lady. I dream of failing to fill sandwich trays. I email myself webpages with sandwich making hints. Then I am going to see Dylan tomorrow night. A very odd day is in the works. I need to find ear plugs.

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Things I Didn’t Know About Until Today

When you think about it, blogs really should be just Friday Bullets. No one really wants to know the half-baked opinions of strangers. No one really is interested in how many ways the unhappy and unintelligent drop-outs and dopes who post comments can insult. They want to know about the stuff that fills the internet that, frankly, anyone would get along fine without ever knowing. Stuff like:

  • The contribution of Alan Blumlein to the invention of stereo sound is only now starting to be appreciated.
  • The RCMP spied on Rita MacNeil.
  • The cops are also after an Olsen twin.
  • Someone at The Globe and Mail actually thinks “Canadian team invades Beijing” is a good headline.
  • People apparently think customers paying for cell phone spam is good business.
  • The Calgary Herald apparently believes that calling an argument a myth is enough to refute it in an partisan editorial written in the 1908-ish style…or one borrowed from bloggers.
  • A man in Bulgaria had the equivalent of 60 beer before driving and then blowing 0.851 – over ten times the Canadian limit.
  • Obama’s lead in the polls may have vanished and advising to keep your tires inflated likely won’t help.

There might be more. There always is. And if Obama is actually in the pocket of big tire gauge industry, expect that to be the thing that swings the presidential election more than anything else.

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