Sunday 30 August 2015

Before Steve Jobs

My kids had their own EyePhone back in the day and thought nothing of taking it everywhere.

Saturday 29 August 2015

When your business burns down.

A few quick lessons on insurance and accounting will be yours when your business burns down. 












Our lesson came August 17th.  You were warned that contents and small tools could add up but may have forgotten about built-ins like sub-panels, compressors, custom fabrications to make things work.  The word "small tools" didn't ring the right bells.   They weren't on the balance sheet any longer but cost plenty to replace.

You may think that naming a second-hand replacement value for major equipment means that's what you get when it's lost.  Correction, it's the lower of named value and what something sort of similar can be bought for.  Perhaps, like us, you hadn't heard of "aggregate value" meaning you can lump the major items together and make up on one what is lost on another.

Then you lose control of your books.  Your depreciation values mean almost nothing and the replacement values are unknown until you settle with the insurance people.  Your productivity may surge back with replacement equipment of lesser value but your equity that the bank wants to know about becomes a mystery.  One cheering thought is that the insurance proceeds are not taxable income.  Another is that you find out your neighbours care about you. We're bouncing back and expect the settlement to be just barely enough but it's a sobering squeaker.

Friday 28 August 2015

"For service in English, Press1"

That's a quintessential Canadian experience.  In the South Okanagan, the second button should be Punjabi and the third, Portugese.   In Richmond BC, the second button, possibly even the first one, should be Chinese.   And in Ottawa, French is the first or second language.  Somehow Ottawa is the pattern for the whole country.


It's ridiculous.  Looking after customers comes first but politicking rules otherwise.   When federal policy stops being "Bilingualism" and becomes getting through to your customers in a language they understand, we'll have escaped the pox of bad policy.  No one needs to perdre la face if the fix is technical with a Google Voice thingy auto-translating.

DNA Transfer Apertures

Youth gets especially excited about sex.  How come sex is pleasurable?  Because YOU, the operating system , don't get it that the millions of cells want to reproduce and YOU are the only channel they have.  So we have data transfer apertures for DNA code and a kind of pleasant madness that seizes us to make sure we use them.    Manimals and feminals want into the future, even if you don't.

The longer we live, the less sex is actually needed to keep the species refreshed since each baby lives longer, and can have more wealth and influence than a big had family back in the day.

Personality, the Me-Myself-And-I, has leverage in the world but thinks itself above the humble system it populates.  That system keeps a couple billion cells and their organs fed and safe.  We Jacks and Jills can skip the priorities of reproduction but our body doesn't agree.  The humble system has fixed it so we get excited by touching near DNA transfer apertures, to lure us into doing something useful for the future.

Two life forms feed on the body politic

Citizens vote for reps but parties run by their own rules.  Both divide the spoils and compete for the upper hand.   Since parties are fed both by voters and power brokers, they have an edge over voters.  But we still have two different life forms, as it were, inhabiting the body politic.  I don't like it.  Parties have an internal voter structure and since motivated voters from the general population can join that,  the potential for outrage is defused. 

The party system captures the democratic spirit and allows insiders and hacks to turn Representatives of the public will into Representatives of the party will.   The leader of the party has the greatest ability to steer the party but this CEO is unelected in a sense because no one but his own riding voters get to advance him to the leadership.   Leaders of each party have made news in recent years for trying to rig nomination meetings.  So there you have it, two different life forms feeding on the body politic.  The party gets more food than the registered voter.

This isn't really news.  Insiders and power brokers have always been the top dogs. What we call democracy introduces a little more information about the governed, introduces better market information, if you will.   We don't want ever to lose the vote but it is not a very responsive system. Once every four years we influence the composition of the insider groups who choose their own leader.  McDonalds or Amazon.ca are far more responsive to their customers and they do it in real time.

A parallel occurs to me:  In our own bodies, there are at least two operating systems.  One is simple animal behaviour to feed and reproduce and the other is like an uploaded software called "me" that cohabits and does its own fascinating things most of the time.  "Me" has the upper hand.  Craziness occurs when both engage in the same activity.  This leads to all the comical things that men and women do that don't quite make sense but we all understand.

Saturday 22 August 2015

Trump explains that Hillary was bought and paid for.

Of course those foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and gobs of money for talks were Pay to Play. Trump explains how that works with a chuckle: 
'With Hillary Clinton, I said "Come to my wedding" and she came to my wedding.  You know why? Because she had no choice, because I gave.'
This did the rounds as a Trump story but for me, it's a Clinton story.  A wealthy insider explains that she takes money and pays favours back.  Case closed.
From the Daily Caller.

Friday 21 August 2015

National Post Headline explains Duffy frenzy.

From the National Post August 21st:
"It may be no sponsorship scandal, but in this tight election race the Duffy trial matters".
It matters alright because it helps the opposition to promote a feeding frenzy on Harper's popularity. Notice how deftly the Duffy tax deduction follies are associated with the liberals sponsorship scandal while denying the same.

As someone said earlier this week:  "Duffy trial - honestly, I don't get it. But what a hell does Duffy's greed and stupidity have to do with what Harper knew or did not know about it? How will the degree of Harper's knowledge of events become a measure of the magnitude of Duffy's breach of the laws?"

A similar story is playing out in the states as Obama, instead of yammering about Hillary's server, keeps silent while the hyenas nip at her ladyship.  I think he likes a Biden/Warren ticket and doesn't give a toot about the security issue.

From "transparencynow":
"It is obvious that discrediting attacks, whatever their motive, generally take place under heavy disguise. First, the attacker must portray his attack as an attempt to support the order of values of society by exposing a violator who deserves to be exposed, in essence enhancing his own image as he assaults another's. ... The disguise of motives is often supplemented by a far more insidious deception, one that masks the fact that an attack is taking place at all or that the journalist or attacker is the one making the attack. Journalists and other communicators often portray themselves as merely asking questions, reporting what others say or describing events, when everyone knows a verbal mugging is actually taking place that may leave the designated victim stripped of the self-defense provided by an effective image"  .

Sunday 16 August 2015

Laugh Out Loud Trump cartoon

Can anyone be president or are elections to validate the choice of competing elites?  The look on the Elephant's face is priceless. The GOP and Democrats believe the latter.  The rules are similar in Canada.
IMG_8909
The seductions of money are revealing character.  I like Trump's punch line that they were begging me for money last year (and I gave them a wad) and now they're trying to trash me.

Saturday 15 August 2015

East Coast Cod Recovery: Hints in 2011, Facts Today.

Four years ago,  cod had rebounded to 37% of their pre-crash levels.  Now everyone is noticing as The Telegram reports:

Leo Hearn remembers fishing cod before 1992, and the sense of impending disaster, as the fish got smaller and more scarce. Hearn also remembers going fishing in the early years of the food fishery, and having a hard time finding fish.
Photo in Telegram story.
 Hearn, who’s been fishing out of Petty Harbour for decades, said he’s seeing fish show up in places that they haven’t been seen for a generation or more.These days, Hearn said that when he was out on the water over the past few weeks, the fish were everywhere.
“Last year was a pretty good sign of fish around, and this year was even better — more places, and a really good sign, places like Renews Rock. They hadn’t been there in 15 years, and the fish are back there now,” he said. “Ferryland right on down to Calvert, Bay Bulls, all those places are seeing a lot of fish.”
When over-fishing was the norm, small fish that adult cod were not eating began to prevail over all cod by eating cod juveniles.

h/t to Bourque for the story link.

Link to the early days.

Obama Lost Iraq on purpose. The Iraqis would have accepted a residual force SFA.

 Senator Lindsey Graham talking to Hugh Hewitt:
"You know, Maliki has got a lot of blame for Iraq falling apart, but I lay this at the foot of the President of the United States solely. The Iraqis to a person would’ve accepted a residual force, but he wanted to get to zero. He would never come forth with a number. They never had a number."

And the background to that statement:
Image result for hugh hewitt and graham lindsey.
 "So we had Ambassador Jeffrey – U.S. Ambassador to Iraq and Gen. Austin, the commander of Iraq forces at the time in the meeting with me, Maliki, and McCain. I asked Prime Minister Maliki, “Would you accept troops?” He says, “If other will, I will.” Then he turned to me and said, “How many troops are you talking about?” I turned to Gen. Austin and then Ambassador Jeffrey – “What’s the answer to the prime minister’s question?” Gen. Dreyfuss says, “We’re still working on the number.” The number went from 18,000 recommended by Austin down to 3,000 coming out of the White House."

Whitewashing the Mullahs to sell the Iran deal, hiding Bin Laden documents.

Kristol and Hayes at the Weekly Standard:
We have been told by six current or former intelligence officials that the collection of documents captured in the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound includes explosive information on Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda over the past two decades, including details of Iran’s support for al Qaeda’s attacks on Americans.

“There are letters about Iran’s role, influence, and acknowledgment of enabling al Qaeda operatives to pass through Iran as long as al Qaeda did their dirty work against the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells The Weekly Standard.

Friday 14 August 2015

Hardball: Barack and Hillary feud plays out in public.


Obama is giving traction to people investigating Clinton's email abuse to bump her from the nomination.  Clinton was hiding stuff from Obama, not from foreigners, on her illegal mail server.

The source for the first: Blood Feud by Edward Klein, the chapter in which Bill Clinton offers to support Obama's second presidential run if Obama will support Hillary Clinton's 2016 run.  It's not a friendly meeting and Obama muses that Michelle might be a candidate.  See also Daily Mail article with the theme: "Government official says Obama is throwing Hillary under the bus to clear presidential campaign path for Joe Biden".

I read the second point about keeping Obama out of her loop somewhere.  Who else would matter to her?  Obviously not the Russians or Chinese since she moved data to low security.   Remember the dictum, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer".  Hillary Clinton was sitting in the "enemies closer" seat and had reason to hide the cards she held.

From linked Breitbart story.
Don't laugh too hard when you read Trump predicts Hillary will drop out and he will be running against Biden.  

The journalists reporting our election belong to a union registered to lobby for the other side.

Click this link to see the other 21 unions and anti-Harper groups that have registered to lobby in the 2015 federal election.  (From Ezra Levant's The Rebel with a tip of the hat to smalldeadanimals.) Canada has its own Journolists and  The Canadian Media Guild which is registered as a lobbyist and which is busy promoting the CBC this week, describes itself:
"The Canadian Media Guild is a democratic trade union representing 6,000 workers in the Canadian media. Our members work at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation/Société Radio-Canada (CBC/SRC), The Canadian Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), TVO, TFO, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (aptn), ZoomerMedia, Shaw Media and CKOI Radio Gatineau (Québec). We also represent media freelancers."

 

 

 

 

 

From elections canada's website:

Registered third parties – 42nd general election – October 19, 2015

Updated on August 14, 2015
Name of Third Party Date of Registration Name of Applicant Mailing Address
Animal Justice Canada Legislative Fund 2015/08/10 Mr. Nicholas Wright 5700-100 King Street West
Toronto ON M5X 1C7
BC Government and Service Employees' Union 2015/08/08 Mr. Paul Finch 4911 Canada Way
Burnaby BC V5G 3W3
Canadian Media Guild (CMG) 2015/08/08 Ms. Carmel Smyth 310 Front Street West, Suite 810
Toronto ON M5V 3B5
Canadian Medical Association 2015/08/05 Mr. Steven Mortimer 1867 Alta Vista Drive
Ottawa ON K1G 5W8
Canadian Union of Postal Workers "CUPW" 2015/08/10 Ms. Beverly J. Collins 377 Bank Street
Ottawa ON K2P 1Y3
Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) 2015/08/10 Mr. Charles Fleury 1375 Saint-Laurent Boulevard
Ottawa ON K1G 0Z7
Canadian Veterans ABC Campaign 2015 2015/08/10 Mr. Thomas S. Beaver 153 Bradshaw Drive
New Maryland NB E3C 1H4
Diane Babcock 2015/08/05 Ms. Diane Babcock 209-550 Bradley Street
Nanaimo BC V9S 5N4
Dogwood Initiative 2015/08/06 Mr. Matt Takach Post Office Box 8701
Victoria BC V8W 3S3
Downtown Mission of Windsor Inc. 2015/08/06 Mr. Ronald D. Dunn 664 Victoria Avenue
Windsor ON N9A 4N2
Fair Vote Canada 2015/08/06 Mr. Douglas J. Bailie 408-283 Danforth Avenue
Toronto ON M4K 1N2
Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec (FTQ) 2015/08/08 Mr. Serge Cadieux 12100-565 Crémazie Boulevard East
Montréal QC H2M 2W3
Friends of Canadian Broadcasting 2015/08/05 Mr. Ian Morrison 1707-33 Lombard Street
Toronto ON M5C 3H8
IATSE 2015/08/06 Mr. John M. Lewis 22 St. Joseph Street
Toronto ON M4Y 1J9
International Longshore & Warehouse Union Canada 2015/08/08 Mr. Mark Gordienko 395-3665 Kingsway
Vancouver BC V5R 5W2
Leadnow Society 2015/08/05 Ms. Lyndsay Poaps 408-119 Pender Street West
Vancouver BC V6B 1S5
Les Sans-Chemise 2015/08/05 Mr. Pierre Céré 3734 du Parc Avenue
Montréal QC H2X 2J1
National Citizens Coalition Inc. 2015/08/12 Mr. Peter D. Coleman 27 Queen Street East, Suite 501
Toronto ON M5C 2M6
Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU) 2015/08/14 Mr. Warren Thomas 100 Lesmill Road
Toronto ON M3B 3P8
Registered Nurses' Association of Ontario (RNAO) 2015/08/13 Ms. Doris Grinspun 158 Pearl Street
Toronto ON M5H 1L3
UNIFOR 2015/08/05 Mr. Peter Kennedy 205 Placer Court
Toronto ON M2H 3H9
Voters Against Harper 2015/08/06 Ms. Jo-Anne P. Raynes 27 Heathdale Road
Toronto ON M6C 1M7

Tuesday 11 August 2015

Your next smartphone is a Xiaomi ("SHOW-em").

Apple is bumped to number three in China and Xiaomi ("SHOW-em") is on top for smartphones.   Learn to pronounce it because your next smartphone may be Xiaomi.  It has a better camera, better battery life, and is lighter and cheaper than an iPhone.  It works with all the apps on Google Play. (Story from Mauldin). 
Lei Jun, founder
If you have doubts, consider this: The boss dresses like Steve Jobs and the phone has fan clubs.

Monday 10 August 2015

Left Turn At Fox

Canada Free Press explains FOX Gotchas at the GOP debate.  Five weeks ago, Rupert Murdoch put his two sons in charge of FOX without forewarning Ailes.  James Murdoch has been leading the charge to make FOX "carbon neutral" and his wife worked for the Clinton Foundation.
The talking heads got the message and the wind in their sails points to Hillary Clinton.

(Foley: "The thing that bothers me most about the Kelly-Trump exchange is that Hillary Clinton is now going to accept the invitation–issued by Kelly–to reopen and amplify the “Republicans hate women” narrative.")

Sunday 9 August 2015

In praise of sexism

Discriminating choices based on gender are useful.  Sexism has a bad rap but high economic value.  Speaking as a man, if she leans her head against my shoulder, looks deeply into my eyes or shows a little cleavage, I'm immediately disposed to put pleasing her above my home, inheritance, kinfolk, and occupation.  This works both ways.  Only a fool would take that high energy impact off the negotiating table.   Exploiting conventional assumptions about sex roles creates leverage for wealth, respect, descendents, power and happiness.


So what if it is discrimination-based-on-sex?   Even a duck's brain is big enough to make important life choices based on sex and it works for them.  The extra 1300 grams of brain-packed cranium that we sport is very clever but not clever enough to change what's baked in.    Get used to it.  The frontal lobe's agenda isn't the brain stem's agenda.

Dictionary.com gives this primary definition of sexism: 
"Attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of gender roles."


Building energy tight houses is a sinkhole for your money

The average return on investment for upgrading  energy tightness in your home or shop is minus 9.5%.     (National Bureau of Economic Research).  That's not a plus, it's a minus 9.5%.  Savings were less than half the prediction and not more cost effective than building more power plants.

You may never see those savings.
But will pay plenty today.
The three R's that help you think (readin'  writin' and 'rithmatic) have been replaced by three R's to manage your behaviour (reduce, re-use, re-cycle).   I like them both but the second triplet is subordinate.

I see it in the construction business.  Houses went from 2x4 to 2x6 walls and that was okay.  Then vapour barriers were added and that was sort of okay for stopping the breeze but trapped moisture and called for powered make-up air  and double skins on the newest houses.  Now advanced green-thinking people have 2x8 walls and I've seen triple walls that are two feet thick on a summer cottage.  The end height of trusses was just mandated up a few inches and adds 5% to 10% to the cost of every roof in Canada.  Houses are more expensive for many reasons but mandated spending to save a few bucks is a big factor, pleasing to elites and costing you and me.

Post idea sourced at Powerline.

Saturday 8 August 2015

Best Tripadvisor Restaurant Review Ever

"We took turns licking the bowl".

From a review of Pilgrimme on Galiano Island, BC.  I look forward to eating there in a few weeks.
"From the fermented potato bread and marinated olives that came out first, we knew we were in for a special experience. The plates were miniature works of art that were carefully assembled prior to serving. The salad of Galiano greens and summer vegetables literally glowed with color. The albacore tuna and Salish Sea salmon were sublime. We just had room to share the dark chocolate and bergamot pot de creme with sea salted caramel. Turns were taken licking the bowl."

"The Great Election In Missinaba County"

Leacock is still timely.  Voters think themselves wise.  Politicians without double standards might have no standards.   Though it's about Conservative and Liberal, there's even a third party figure who reminds me of Trump, ignored by serious political pundits at their peril.  And the press plays along.  A couple teasers so you'll re-read it at the link:
"Everybody in Mariposa is either a Liberal or a Conservative or else is both. Some of the people are or have been Liberals or Conservatives all their lives and are called dyed-in-the-wool Grits or old-time Tories and things of that sort. These people get from long training such a swift penetrating insight into national issues that they can decide the most complicated question in four seconds: in fact, just as soon as they grab the city papers out of the morning mail, they know the whole solution of any problem you can put to them. There are other people whose aim it is to be broad-minded and judicious and who vote Liberal or Conservative according to their judgment of the questions of the day. If their judgment of these questions tells them that there is something in it for them in voting Liberal, then they do so. But if not, they refuse to be the slaves of a party or the henchmen of any political leader.

We can see,—it's plain enough now,—that in the great election Canada saved the British Empire, and that Missinaba saved Canada and that the vote of the Third Concession of Tecumseh Township saved Missinaba County, and that those of us who carried the third concession,—well, there's no need to push it further. We prefer to be modest about it.

Missinaba County, I say, is a regular hive of politics, and not the miserable, crooked, money-ridden politics of the cities, but the straight, real old-fashioned thing that is an honour to the country side. Any man who would offer to take a bribe or sell his convictions for money, would be an object of scorn. I don't say they wouldn't take money,—they would, of course, why not?—but if they did they would take it in a straight fearless way and say nothing about it. They might,—it's only human,—accept a job or a contract from the government, but if they did, rest assured it would be in a broad national spirit and not for the sake of the work itself.
"Mr. Smith," said the reporter of the Mariposa Newspacket, "we'd like to get your views of the effect of the proposed reduction of the differential duties." "By gosh, Pete," said Mr. Smith, "you can search me. Have a cigar." "What do you think, Mr. Smith, would be the result of lowering the ad valorem British preference and admitting American goods at a reciprocal rate?" "It's a corker, ain't it?" answered Mr. Smith. "What'll you take, lager or domestic?" And in that short dialogue Mr. Smith showed that he had instantaneously grasped the whole method of dealing with the press. The interview in the paper next day said that Mr. Smith, while unwilling to state positively that the principle of tariff discrimination was at variance with sound fiscal science, was firmly of opinion that any reciprocal interchange of tariff preferences with the United States must inevitably lead to a serious per capita reduction of the national industry."
 And so on, chapters 10 and 11 of Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town, available on line.

Friday 7 August 2015

Thursday 6 August 2015

People should be peeing on fire hydrants? More about the fallen lamp post in San Francisco.

The base of the pole was corroded by urine and it held up a banner.
The spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilties Commission says “We encourage people and dogs alike to do their business in other places, like a proper restroom or one of our fire hydrants, which are stronger and made out of cast iron.”

The story's everywhere but the picture is missing. Here it is.





Hire Math

Retail staff may get lost having to count back your change but this story from a Burger King in the Okanagan beats them all.  The till showed my friend was owed 99 cents in change. The young lady rounded it off in her head and handed him two dimes.  He says "That's a mistake" and hands back the dimes.  She thinks about it and rounds it the other way, handing him a dime and a nickel this time.   He wishes I could post the dumbfounded look on her face when she still didn't get it.


This teenager didn't get along with "Matthew Matics" but there's also a school system that let her down.

Wednesday 5 August 2015

Reward politicians for good behaviour but don't trust them.

Barton Swain was speechwriter to disgraced governor, Mark Sanford, and has written a sobering but delightful account of it.  The take-away:
Author of "The Speechwriter"
"Why do we trust men who have sought and attained high office by innumerable acts of vanity and self will? .. Why do we trust the men who make careers of persuading us of their goodness and greatness, and who compete for our votes?  .. They serve because they glory in receiving glory... We should reward such people with the fame they so desire - if and when they perform real public services. Much of the hand-wringing commentary about the loss of trust in government resulting from Vietnam and Watergate is simply..a failure to appreciate the simple truth that politicians should never have been trusted in the first place.  They may be lauded when they're right and venerated when they're dead, but they should never be trusted.
Self-regard isn't a foible to which some politicians are vulnerable.  It is the peculiar and deadly flaw of modern democratic politics. .. Successful politicians are people who know how to make (voters) think well of them without our realizing that's what they're doing. .. I don't say this to demean politicians.  It takes an able and industrious person to do what they do, and many of them are capable of courage and honorable conduct.  But the same can be said of traveling salesmen;  it does not follow that we should trust them."   

Most Googled Is Trump

Ahead of the first GOP debate, across America it's TRUMP everywhere all the time on Google search.  Hat tip to Breitbart.





If you like your cholesterol, you can keep it.

The US decided to drop warnings about diet cholesterol.   Here's the short version:
"The body creates cholesterol in amounts much larger than ... diet provides,  ..The body regulates how much is in the blood and ... there is both “good” and “bad” cholesterol"
Too much cholesterol (the wrong kind) delivered to the wrong places (after being made and deployed in your own body) endangers your health.   For years you've been badgered by know-it-alls trying out the Beta version of their advice through lawfare and classroom indoctrination.  Don`t pooh pooh expert advice.  Just stay cautious.   The same story is being played out with salt in your diet. (`How the recommended low levels of salt in your diet might actually be dangerous.``)

Tuesday 4 August 2015

97% sure we are wrecking the world with C02 - NOT

Hold your nose.  There's no 97% consensus.  That's the kind of vote Saddam Hussein got in old Iraq (99.6%) and Barack Hussein Obama got in some Philadelphia precincts (100%) where not one Romney vote was registered. The 97% puffery is coming from the smelly end of the IPCC beast.



Two observations:
1.  (Hat tip to smalldeadanimals):  Since 31,000 scientists signed a petition to "Urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement" and since all but 3% of scientists agree about a global warming crisis, then somewhere there must be 970,000 scientists backing the global warming consensus.   They're missing and in fact there are but 2500 scientists that the IPCC claims to speak for.




2.   When you drill down to see how those 2500 got on the record, this appalling information emerges:
"While a total of 2,500 (or some similar number) scientists participate in some way in the writing or review of its reports, the IPCC’s working group responsible for assessing the causes of climate change and its future trajectory consists of only about 600 scientists, and many of those are activists working for environmental interest groups. For the Fourth Assessment Report, only 62 were responsible for reviewing the chapter that attributed climate change to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, with 55 of those being known advocates of the theory of man-made global warming. Of the seven impartial reviewers, two disagreed with the statement, leaving only five credible scientific reviewers who unequivocally endorse the IPCC’s conclusion, a far cry from 2,500."

SASK Dollar At Par

I used to like the "Alberta Money At Par" signs.  That joke is toast.  Albertans spent their heritage money, voted NDP, and have no one to blame but themselves.  



Seen on an Okanagan highway:

Monday 3 August 2015

Americans envy Canada as Harper appoints conservative blogger to Supreme Court

Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds wishes US was more like Canada.  
Russ Brown didn't have to water down his views in a bruising confirmation spectacle.  His years as a blogger at the University of Alberta are a feature, not a bug.

Six GOP last minute polls. UPDATE

View snapshots of six presidential polls coming out just before the August 6th GOP debates.
The first are two from conservative-libertarian websites:  Instapundit and HotAir.  Then four from Monmouth, NBC/WSJ, Rasmussen, and Quinnipiac.   Fiorina soars in the first two.


Instapundit
HotAir



Monmouth(August 3)


NBC/WSJ  August 2nd

Quinnipiac (July 30th)

Rasmussen.  (July 30th)
UPDATE The Breitbart poll  which has Cruz edging over Trump and Bush irrelevant.





For the next election, a semi-sincere effort will do.

I don't want a perfect Canada, "perfect" being the enemy of the good.  Bumbling along with competing policies, sometimes all of them wrong, is better for our country than being driven by 'pure laine' ideology.  Wanting hate-free speech or completely open markets to prevail is over reach. Likewise the view that we must all have a Come-To-Jesus moment or a meat-less, zoo-less, border-less world is intemperate.

One of my grandfathers would say: "Why is the sea so close to the shore?  The answer is, no matter how thin you slice it, it's still baloney".     Some facts on the ground simply ARE and wishing to prevail over them by superior logic is folly.   "It is what it is" is a helpful insight, not a cop-out.  Life is a bit muddled and sort of complicated, not well-served by an ideologue.

Related:
"All that’s needed is a semi-sincere effort to avoid big deficits, combined with a semi-decent amount of economic growth".
How long is the coast of Great Britain?
It depends on your ruler
but it is what it is.

Saturday 1 August 2015

Tar sand mining IS the Clean Up


Just a reminder, tar has been oozing into the Athabasca River since forever.
Seventy or eighty miles along the river-bank, out of which oil oozes at frequent intervals... …tar there is … in plenty. … It oozes from every fissure, and into some bituminous tar wells we can poke a twenty-foot pole and find no resistance.(1909 & Cameron 71)
Have you seen that pop-up propaganda ad, "one drop of oil pollutes a million drops of water", the ad showing a guy with his mouth under a spigot of motor oil?

It was a profit to the natives when they patched their canoes with it but now there's better money available in cheques from the Tides Corporation.



Related: Forest fires this summer in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan polluted on a staggering scale compared to the tar sands.  h/t smalldeadanimals

Central USA June 29th
A reminder that smoke
must go somewhere.


Friday 31 July 2015

The Government America Deserves: The Donald Is A Better Fit Than Hillary Or Jeb

This is about democracy, not wisdom and it's no contest that a brash loudmouth with brains, money and bling is more  appealing to Americans than wussified slates of politicians. When I saw this video of two giggling black ladies telling us not to dump on Trump, I knew that if he wins the GOP convention, for better or worse America will have "President Trump" because he'll capture chunks of the Democrat's tame electorate.
Who should be number one?  An aristocrat or the common man, a plutocrat or an Ivy League lawyer, anyone who can get a majority of votes or the descendents of past rulers? (Bush, Clinton and Queen Elizabeth).   Democracy will always be gamed by strong players but even without them, democracy will just deliver the kind of government you deserve to get.  You may not like it but any political mechanism that forces an orderly recreation of the leadership is better than all the alternatives.

And today from Breitbart:
"Donald Trump ..is, culturally speaking, a terrific fit for black America. Blacks seem to identify with Trump’s swagger: they put him in enough rap songs, after all. He’s got hip-hop cred and defiant charisma the dreary Obama could never hope to match."


Wednesday 29 July 2015

Organic food laced with natural poisons

"99.99 percent (by weight) of the pesticides in the American diet are chemicals that plants produce to defend themselves" The vast majority of pesticidal substances that we consume are in our diets “naturally” and are present in organic foods as well as non-organic ones. Moreover, “natural and synthetic chemicals are equally likely to be positive in animal cancer tests.” Thus, consumers who buy organic to avoid pesticide exposure are focusing their attention on just one-hundredth of one percent of the pesticides they consume.

Bruce Ames.jpg
Bruce Ames
Sourced at Forbes, quoting an unnamed Berkley study by Ames and colleagues. The Ames link is clear that he has published in this field and designed the most common test for mutagenicity but doesn't point to a specific paper.

It's no surprise that a life form that competes with us but has no legs has found a thousand tricks to be bitter, prickly, nauseating, sour, rash-causing and generally tough.  That goes into the food chain.

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Science fiction rocket drive sounding like non-fiction now.

An unexplained electromagnetic propulsion drive continues to pass tests.  "For every action there is an equal and opposite action" was gospel from Newton's day but this darn thing (RF resonant cavity thruster) just goes without a push-back.   The Telegraph story is one of many that hit the news this week.   It's been properly pooh-poohed for more than a decade because the science is still missing. But it's been duplicated and triplicated.  The EM Drive is turning into one of the top stories ever for space exploration.

From The Telegraph:
It produces thrust by using solar power to generate multiple microwaves that move back and forth in an enclosed chamber. This means that until something fails or wears down, theoretically the engine could keep running forever without the need for rocket fuel. (It) defies one of the fundamental concepts of physics – the conservation of momentum –
Shawyer invented it over ten years ago but recently NASA said they think it works and a professor at the Dresden University of Technology demonstrated that it produces thrust.  Chinese researchers also came up with a working model with net thrust.  The picture below (from the Telegraph) belongs in a Jules Verne movie with its coppery plate and myriad bolts.

The concept of a photon rocket has been around for a while, that the emission of photons can generate thrust in space.  The thrust generation of the new device has a thousand-fold advantage. Sounds promising.  Until the science is known, leave this one in the PENDING file, a game changer if scaled up and understood.


Using people to think will be like using monkeys to test drugs


We are no Lords of Creation, more like grass of the field that caught fire.  When the fuel is gone the fire will disappear.   I see three paths of combustion:  1. The singularity is near  with a hyperbolic transformation of human nature into something other.  2.  We perish from the earth for our sins or some accident from outer space.  3:  The flare-up of consciousness passes from people to AI.   Using people to think will be like using monkeys to test drugs, a cheap work-around until something better composes itself.

Picture billions of humans, sort of the Northern Spotted Owl of tomorrow, not very useful but cheap to leave content in ecological reserves.  Today there’s worry about jobs lost to robots as San Francisco raises the minimum wage to $15 and totally awesome hamburgermachines get invented to compensate.  Tomorrow it will be so cheap to supply basic energy, food and selfies to humans that most people will have no need to work unless they have a spark within.     


Per Ardua Ad Astra will be for the very few.  All progress is self-limiting, coming up with zoning rules, copyrights, review boards and Thou Shalt Nots to keep things just the way they are after I got mine.  With self-driving cars and bicycle helmets,  eco-reserves for minnows and frogs, reflective jackets and dawn-to-dusk parent-patrolled childhood, there will be less challenge and those who survive will be both fit and un-fit.  In other words, evolution is treated like the enemy.   People as we know them are becoming less fit to survive and reproduce though richer and freer than ever before.

What fuel these mortals be.
As a conservative do you protect the fuel or the spark?

Third party surprise

What if the third party run in the USA is the GOP?  A populist storm with Trump out in front could own the Republican brand.   The McConnells and Boehners and Cheneys would be the splinter in 2020 trying to re-brand for the good old days, a bit like the Progressive Conservatives trying to get their party back from the rednecks out of Alberta.  Clever Trump got in some points with the Palin crowd today.  He's no conservative but he's zeitgeist.

Monday 27 July 2015

Conventional wisdom about energy use


What you knew as a youth about energy is mostly baloney today. Look at the profound changes in the chart.  Remember muscle and firewood?  In my grandfather’s childhood they supplied 90% of Europe's energy.  Now they’re heritage sidelines for tourists who want to ride in rickshaws and see maple syrup made old-style in a sugaring bush.    The oil haters can’t trace their evil enemy back much before WW2 and it’s already being displaced by gas.  (The chart is normalized to 100% every year and gives relative importance only.)



Sourced here

Related: Where energy comes from and where it is consumed in America in a handy chart. Most waste is from vehicles and power generation while home and industry uses are tight.  The inputs are already out of date in this chart.

Canada's clean air and water prove the Pope's wrong about capitalism.

Capitalism continues to lift millions out of poverty when given a chance. It also pays for cleaning up the air and water.   Pollution is way down in Canada as the Fraser Institute has to remind us every year.
"It is precisely in the countries where markets are relatively free, and where private enterprise is allowed to pursue profits, that we have seen the greatest gains in environmental quality over the past half century. The best examples of this are two decidedly capitalist countries, Canada and the United States.    On almost all measures, Canadians currently experience significantly better air quality than at any other time since continuous monitoring of air quality began in the 1970s. Concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide, for instance, have decreased sharply. Concentrations of carbon monoxide, a potent toxic emission, have decreased everywhere in Canada. And it’s not simply air quality that has improved. As previous reports have documented, water quality in Canada is generally quite good, and forests are no longer harvested beyond levels that are considered environmentally protective. More and more waste water is subject to high levels of treatment before being released to the environment, more solid waste is being diverted to recycling, soil quality has improved, and the size of protected areas has increased over recent decades. The United States has seen similar (if not greater) improvements in environmental protection. A 2005 report published by the U.S. Department of State summarized 30 years of environmental progress thus: “During this time, the U.S. economy grew by 187 per cent, population grew by 39 percent, and energy consumption increased by 47 per cent, yet air pollution decreased by 48 percent. In 2002, 94 per cent of Americans were served by community water systems that met all health-based standards, up from 79 per cent of the population in 1993.” And improvements continue. As of 2013, according to the EPA, ambient concentrations of carbon monoxide decreased by 84 per cent of their 1980 levels; ozone had fallen by 33 per cent; ambient lead by 92 per cent, and sulfur dioxide by 81 per cent over the same time span."
Pope Francis should make his point by telling the world: "Search out lands where smog is beaten back and sewage kept from streams. Such emulate".

If you click on the "lift millions out of poverty" link above, you'll find Michael Totten's article on the miracle turnaround in Vietnam, a sample herewith:
"State subsidies were abolished. Private businesses were allowed to operate again. Businessmen, investors, and employees could keep their profits and wages. Farmers could sell their produce on the open market and keep the proceeds instead of giving them up to the state. The results were spectacular. It took some time for a middle class to emerge, but from 1993 to 2004, the percentage of Vietnamese living in poverty dropped from 60 percent to 20 percent. Before Doi Moi, the command economy contracted, and inflation topped out at over 700 percent; it would eventually shrink to single digits. After years of chronic rice shortages, Vietnam became the world’s second-largest exporter of rice."

Saturday 25 July 2015

President Trump: A credible preview.

This WHAT IF scenario comes from Roger Simon.  ("Get Used To It").
Amidst the humor you learn Trump has a drinks business in Israel and are reminded that negotiations will be brisk, that ISIS won't be getting any love, some deadwood will be fired and the private sector will be pumping out new jobs.  Iran will be out and Israel will be in.

"Trigger warnings" will be silly again.


Political Philosophies That Weaponize Losers

Use this meme to prevail in argument.  Sourced from Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit and applied to Western followers of ISIS and Communism.

More at Holland's "Political Pilgrims".  People who seek Utopian "hope and change" are driven by a deep discontent with their own societies, which leads them to deny or excuse the myriad moral defects of the places they visit. (Paraphrased).