The Big Takeover

I was going to write something about the economic meltdown but it's probably better if you just read this article by Matt Tabbi in the upcoming Rolling Stone Magazine.

Glass Houses

I live in an unusual house. It was originally one of the first Loblaws stores on a busy street in West Toronto Junction. It is unmistakably a retail storefront building. When I renovated it and turned it into my living space I wondered what to do with the front exposure. I toyed with the idea of leaving it uncovered and simply living my domestic life in full view. I was reminded of the 1921 novel "We" by the Russian Zamyatin. The world in which the protagonist D-503 lives is made mostly out of glass. People literally live in glass houses and everyone's daily activities are visible to anyone passing by.

I decided against such a bold move and constructed a wall inside the storefront to separate my private space from public view. During the past 4 years in which I've lived behind that wall I've been engaged in another kind of exposure. I started blogging, signed up for Facebook and began using Twitter along with over a dozen other social networking platforms that essentially reveal more and more about what I'm doing when, where, and with who. It allows anyone willing to sort through the content to be able to develop a pretty good sense of who I am and what I stand for. People who choose to participate in this Panopticon are tearing down walls and replacing them with windows. We are moving closer to what D-503 must have experienced in his world.

It should be noted that George Orwell didn't really hide the fact that his 1984 owed a great deal to Zamyatin's novel. In Orwell's dystopian world Winston Smith and all of its citizens are constantly monitored with a telescreen. This is a two-way communication device that allows for the mass distribution of information while also monitoring the activities of its viewers. Big Brother's omnipresent omniscience of everyone's activities is stifling and oppressive. Big Brother goes even further by trying through the activities of the Thought Police to monitor what each person is thinking. The irony in our world is that many of us are doing the job of the Thought Police by voluntarily posting everything about ourselves online.

Why are we so untroubled by so much exposure? It probably has to do with the general feeling that our governments are not so nefarious. Most people don't seem to think that our governments are evil or corrupt enough to use this information against us. In short there is a trusting relationship between the parties involved. You have probably noticed that when you share private information with a close friend, a stronger bond and trust will often result. This will work as long as your friend is not a psychopath, in which case they will simply file it away and use it against you in the future to manipulate and control you.

Big Brother is not as evil and psychopathic as the conspiracy theorists would have you believe but perhaps it should be the cause for some concern that all of this information that we cast out into cyberspace is permanently available if, or when, an evil and nefarious government does take control. Even with that realization I'm still not very concerned simply because as we increasingly replace the walls around us with glass we make increasing demands on our governments to do the same. As we develop a taste for transparency and it's transformative powers we insist that anyone or group that we elect to rule us will have to reciprocate the exposure. We are Little Brother and we insist that Big Brother also live in a glass house or we will simply refuse to support or elect them.

If you live your life afraid to express your inner fears and desires to your friends because you worry that you might not be able to trust them not to use it against you, then you might find yourself without any friends. By putting it all out there for everyone to see you'll find that others will feel more comfortable doing the same and eventually a more open and transparent situation will result; in your personal life as well as your politics. But this will only work if you demand the same from your friends and leaders.

Wassup 2008

Democratic Capitalism

George W. Bush recently made a point of stressing that Democratic Capitalism is still "the best system ever developed". This, despite the fact that his administration has recently engaged in some economic activities that even his party members have called "socialist" or even "communist". I don't often agree with this President but I found myself nodding in agreement but also chuckling a little bit when I heard him make this pronouncement. It seemed like he didn't want anyone to think he was going all pinko on us, he just needed to pull some pinko tricks to save the banking system and stave off the worst financial calamity since the great depression of the 1930's.


Democratic Capitalism while clearly not perfect is a reasonable and efficient means to the end of maximizing happiness. What we've seen championed by the recent White House has definitely been Capitalism, but Democratic?... Not so much. As long as the Democratic side of that characterization is prioritized then Capitalism can be employed to arrive at some excellent results. What happens sometimes, as it has recently in the Western financial system is that we've forgotten that Capitalism is a means towards the ends of Democracy, not something that should be pursued at the cost of Democratic priorities.


Just because Capitalism is an efficient means of arriving at economic results doesn't mean that the most extreme version of laissez-faire Capitalism will therefore be the best possible road to success. Why do we create wealth in the first place? If you think it is only for the purpose of lining your own pockets at the expense of anyone else living on Earth now or in the future, then you might want the most open system of unregulated markets, especially if you already happen to be someone of wealth to begin with. If you think that wealth should be created so that you and as many of the people on your planet as possible could also live happily then you might accept that Capitalism is an efficient way to arrive at this goal. With this in mind you wont mind that the system is regulated and occasionally tweaked to ensure that we keep our priorities in focus. Trickle-down economics only works to a limited degree. After certain high levels of wealth have been attained the trickle mostly stops.

Capitalism went too far recently and the resulting pendulum swing may destroy wealth faster than it created it in the first place. Why can't we learn that fundamentalism of any kind is a dangerous and doomed mindset to embrace? The free market capitalists that were pushing for the deregulation of markets and the decommissioning of government are just as dangerously fundamentalist as the extremists who wish to destroy them. The key to surviving any crisis is to try to avoid whip-lashing in the opposite direction. Just because Capitalism is flawed and has caused this current turmoil doesn't mean that a hyper-controlling style of government is therefore better. Let's try to keep our heads, remember our priorities and move toward our New Capitalism to meet those needs.

Does This Image Make You Want To Rape?

I am a strong proponent of liberal expression even when it is somewhat offensive. At the same time I am sensitive to the issues surrounding the exploitation of women. American Apparel ads have served lately to cause a schism in liberal circles between those who would more value one consideration over the other.

When this ad appeared on a billboard in New York's lower east side someone eventually spray-painted it with the message "Gee, I wonder why women get raped?". I've seen the same ad on a billboard on Yonge Street in Toronto and I have to say that I didn't decide to rape anyone as a result of seeing it. Consider that this photo is a self-portrait taken by the Artist Kyung Chung. Her backside wrapped in tights is turned to the camera as she's slightly bent over. It is undoubtedly an erotically charged pose but I fail to see any exploitation. She is a strong women artist in a strongly sexual pose, completely in charge of the situation. There is no hint of compulsion within the narrative of the photo. The character is bent over suggestively and one of the reasons it is so alluring is that she is in charge of the situation and seems to be demanding the service of her imaginary lover. Chung's photo does not portray the female character to be vulnerable in any way in which she doesn't want to be.

People seem more sexually liberal in Europe where you're likely to see this kind of advertising but with even more nudity. In cultures where women are presented and represented in scant cladding we don't find them to be at higher risk of being sexually assaulted. I would argue exactly the opposite. Cultures wherein the revelation of skin is discouraged seem much more dangerous to women. If a women shows any flesh in Saudi Arabia she might be considered a slut and therefore much more likely to be raped than in Copenhagen where she can walk around (weather permitting) in next to nothing.

Someone is quoted in a newspaper article about Chung's photo saying "I don't think you need a PhD to recognize that ... [this] is nothing but an ad for - and I'll put this gently - anal intercourse," - What? First of all who would produce such an ad? Would it be presented by the AIAA (Anal Intercourse Association of America)? Secondly, why does penetration of one kind seem demeaning to her besides another kind. I think there are actually some people who enjoy such things and don't need to be forced to do it. Also she might want to note that that's not the the only kind of penetration possible in that position, but if your dirty mind causes you to leap to that scenario then you have to see that the model in the picture is demanding it not resisting it, so how does rape or a demeaning scenario even come into it?

What if instead of discouraging sexually suggestive ads we just didn't make such a big deal about them? Wouldn't women be safer in a society that viewed such images as commonplace? It seems to me that sexual repression is more likely to lead to desperate acts of violence against women than sexual liberation. I'm sure that the critics of these ads have nothing but the best of intentions to protect women from harm but that photo of Kyung Chung can also be seen simply as a beautiful and powerful image created by a beautiful and powerful women.

As a point for comparison the story being told in the D&G ad below seems to more clearly cross the line. The narrative within this vignette clearly suggests a gang rape scenario. Even though this ad is aimed at women and even though some women may have such fantasies I can see why it may be offensive.

Law of the Living Dead

The Romans had a very peculiar legal designation. A man could be deemed a Homo Sacer and thereby could be killed by anyone with impunity. He would lose all rights associated with being Human thereby reducing him to Bare Life or Zoe. It's a bizarre notion that can't just be attributed to an uninformed and primitive culture. By this time the Romans had a lengthy legal and political tradition and they had legal scholars who could argue the fine details of proposed legislation. So it seems anomalous that such an advanced culture could devise such retrograde legislation.


Recent developments have shown us that it is quite possible for a highly advanced culture with a long tradition of Human Rights to go seriously off track in much the same way as the Romans did. Those who have been held prisoner in Guantanamo Bay over the last several years have effectively been stripped of their human rights and been reduced to Bare Life. Some have debated on American television that these prisoners had no rights because they were the intended targets of American bombs and just happened to accidentally survive the attack. They have actually been called "ghost prisoners". Are they to be considered zombies or living dead? Everyone knows it's OK to torture and kill zombies because they're not really human, right?


I grant that it's possible that some of these prisoners are really bad guys. It's also very likely that most of them are probably clueless zealots who were at the wrong places at the wrong times. We have a process for sifting through this indeterminacy. It's called a functioning legal system that works for the most part in arriving at guilt where there is evidence of guilt. Let's just put them through the system and see what sticks.


Canada has been well regarded throughout the world for its stand on Human Rights. It has mostly deserved this regard until now. The current Harper government refuses to respect the rule of law when it goes along with the US insistence on incarceration without charge. Furthermore, Canadians have been pioneers in advocating child soldier laws for African children but its government has been sitting idly by as one of its citizen children has been languishing in Guantanamo Bay for the last several years without charge. Omar Khadr was 15 when he was shot in the back and captured by US soldiers in Afghanistan. He should have been classified a child soldier and dealt with through the processes that have been designed for children who are caught up in military movements often within the control of malevolent adults or family.


Let's bring him back to Canada and deal with him like we would any child soldier. Hopefully he will not be too far gone to reintegrate into society and come back to the land of the living.

Geography of Hope

I was at the Gladstone a few days ago to see Chris Turner's slide show about his book The Geography of Hope. This was part of the This is not a Reading Series.

The standing room only crowd indicates to me that people are thirsty for his kind of message. It's too easy to feel hopeless when those in power either don't get it, don't care, or strategically ignore the climate and pollution crisis. Too many of us just feel overwhelmed and as if we're just reorganizing the deck chairs on the Titanic but Turner wants to stress that the science and the technology required to solve or significantly mitigate our problems already exist. What's lacking is the will to do something about it.

Another point he made is one with which I agree: that we have to stop preaching to the converted and start speaking to corporations in their own language. I believe that there are strong business cases to be made for environmentally responsible approaches to business. The short form of the argument is to say that The Environment is the Economy.

Some governments are catching on and they come in all political stripes. Governator Schwarzenegger of California has surprised everyone by becoming one of the greenest leaders in America. The government in BC made their province the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax. They are shaming their next door neighbours in Alberta who are turning their province into an environmental disaster zone with the hyper-developed Tar Sands projects which are under way.

Left to their own devices both corporations and governments can do a good job of messing things up. But corporations are very skilled at bringing about rapid and efficient change. Governments need to use the levers at their disposal to create the incentives and disincentives for business and let them do what they do best. The Conservative Party in Canada seems unwilling to even treat the Environment as a serious issue. The Liberal Party talks a good game but does not seem to have the will to carry out important changes. The NDP seems to distrust business and ironically will often support dirty industries to mollify their labour constituents. The only reasonable choice for responsible action seems to lie with The Green Party.

I've been voicing my support for the Green Party for some time here in this forum and amongst friends. A federal election is just around the corner and this time around I will be volunteering to help the Green Party.

Fuck Earth

The feminine is associated with the Earth while the masculine is associated with the higher realms. The results of this simple rule of thumb has had disastrous consequences for both the Earth and the female souls that inhabit her. The earthly bits of our being are all around us and because of their abundance are debased and rendered to a lower rank than the ethereal bits.


First, with respect to women: Desires of the flesh are so outside of the realm of reason that they are described as a form of ecstatic madness. The men who wrote about these matters had an unhealthy view of sex it seems and so began to debase not only these sexual desires but also came to resent the objects of their desires. Women were thought to be incapable of higher purposes and their roles relegated to that of executors of worldly functions like birthing, feeding, and sexual gratification. The injustices of this world view became glaringly obvious with the advent of a more industrial and technological age. We have been slow in rectifying it in the West while it seems to have stalled completely in much of the Islamic world.


Secondly, this separation of the profane and divine along the lines of the physical and spiritual have lead to an inherent disrespect for the environment. Religions and cultures that don't make the delineation in this way almost always have a comportment to the Earth that is not one of seeing it simply as exploitable material. These cultures have a more sensible sense of the divine which considers it to reside in the world around us. In fact it is often this very Nature and Earth within which we live that is considered divine and such divinity is achieved through accepting and living with this revelation.



Descriptions of the sexual act are sometimes used in hurtful and derogatory ways such that to "fuck something" means to damage it; as in "Capitalism has really fucked the Earth". But Capitalism doesn't have to be rapacious. Both rape and lovemaking can be described as fucking. I advocate fucking the Earth but in the attentive caring and gentle ways that one would make love to a woman, considering her joy as much as your own.

laptop.org

I ordered my OLPC laptop a few seconds after they opened up the order page in November. I only received it a few days ago despite their promise to try and deliver before the holidays. It's an ambitious effort to get computers into the hands of the poorest children in the world and they're off to a decent start.

I've been testing it and am impressed so far. It's a lot smaller and lighter than my 12" Apple PowerBook and has a more powerful WiFi receiver. In my local Starbucks here at the edge of High Park where I do some writing I normally can't pick up any open router transmissions but with the XO laptop I can see a few available signals. The browser is a little slow compared to the PowerBook and seems to have trouble with Flash video but otherwise is quite robust.

When we featured it at the last Juice Dialogues by bringing in a representative with a working model we had a very positive response from the participants although I was surprised to hear from some of the more radical young people that it was perhaps just another example of our cultural imperialism imposing our techno centric and even logo centric culture on more traditional and probably richer oral cultures. Even though that interpretation may factually be true I'm not sure what the alternative is supposed to be. Unfortunately the game is rigged and one needs to be able to read, write and electronically communicate in order to escape poverty in our world and this is an elegant way to give some children the opportunity to develop these skills.


If you'd like one you can pay a total of $400 for two laptops. You will be sent one and automatically donate one to some deserving child in a developing setting. Every time I open it up in public people inevitably ask about it and this is really the reason I got it. It is a way to spread the word. I encourage you to buy one, donate, or just talk it up.

[Update: The first wave of the Buy 2 Get 1 program seems to be over for now]

Zig Zag Man

My friend G was one of the biggest guys in our school and yet displayed much speed and agility on the playing fields. His talents didn't go unnoticed and he was given a football scholarship to an American university. I went off to University in Toronto and enrolled in classes in philosophy, psychology and linguistics while he went south to play football and enrolled in classes in bowling and archery.

When I saw him again over the Christmas holidays that year I couldn't believe how much he had changed. He looked like he had packed on about 50 pounds of muscle. He wasn't shy or secretive about it, he told me that the team medical staff had put him on a course of anabolic steroids. This was just what every school did and every professional football player as far as he knew also injected himself with the stuff.

Ricky Williams has been twice suspended from NFL football for testing positive for marijuana use. This is somewhat bizarre since nobody is claiming that it has given him any advantage while working as a professional running back (unless it's actually what suppresses his fear while running full speed into 350 pound linemen). Meanwhile it is pretty likely that almost all of the larger players in the NFL and Major League Baseball have used or still continue to use performance enhancing drugs.


Unlike alcohol or anabolic steroids; marijuana is not known to make the user violent or aggressive. So it's use is quite irrelevant for a football player. It also does not make one particularly quick, either mentally or physically. This is why the Olympic people rightly reversed Ross Rebagliati's initial disqualification of his gold medal win in the snowboarding event after he tested positive for THC.

The video below could be made into a very useful public service announcement.

Let's Put our Heads Together

Who's more likely to accurately guess the weight of a large ox; a livestock expert or a large group of amateurs? Francis Galton was surprised to discover that the average of the guesses of the crowd of amateurs was more accurate than the estimate of any single member of the crowd including experts. James Surowiecki has written a book called The Wisdom of the Crowds. The subtitle of the book is Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.

Western societies have an inherently dichotomous approach to authority. We believe fiercely in the ability of the individual to make decisions for one's self but we willingly acquiesce to the wisdom of the crowds that control the outcome of electoral democratic elections. We elect leaders by giving every single person the opportunity to choose not just professors of Political Science. So it's not difficult for us to accept that a very large group of citizens can arrive at a better decision than a group of oligarchs just like a small group of jurors can arrive at a better decision than a judge (or not).


The world of business has always at been at peace with this approach as it is just plainly true that whatever price a crowd of investors is willing to pay for a share is what accurately determines the price of that share. The futures markets essentially makes bets on what people believe will be the price of a commodity at a certain time in the future. These markets have been shown to be uncannily prescient in these matters as they tend to be incredibly accurate. Even futures markets that bet on who they believe will be the winners of elections have been shown to be more accurate than most polling results. But this seems to work well only when there is something to win or lose by the result of your prediction. People could respond to pollsters' questions in any number of ways but they become much more focused and accurate when there's something immediately at stake.


Businesses are now starting to apply this approach internally by giving away prizes like iPods to employees who can predict something like the date of completion of a particular project. The results they collect from the entries are much more accurate than the time-lines they find in the reports given to them by their subordinates.

Recent technological developments are giving rise to similar innovations in social and political realms. A mass of text-messaging teenagers are given the task of choosing the next American Idol over the expert opinions of that really mean Englishman panelist. A Wikipedia entry is not written by a single expert but is now the source most trusted to supply accurate information. The impressive adoption rate of Facebook gives us an unprecedented opportunity to apply this wisdom of the crowds in myriad ways to our everyday lives. The potential of a large network of individual peers to help us make decisions has not yet even been touched.

Future By Design

I just went to a screening of Future By Design by William Gazecki. It features the thought and works of an extraordinary 91 year old inventor name Jacque Fresco. This man still spends his days thinking about ways to redesign cities in a way he wants to resist calling utopian but I can't think of a better description.

When Sir Thomas Moore wrote 500 years ago of an island he called Utopia he was making a play on words: The Greek ou-topos, meaning "no place", and eu-topos, meaning "good place". It is an imagined place of perfection that does not exist and some would say cannot exist. The ideas brought forth by Jacque Fresco are all within the realm of possibility but so many factors stand in the way of them ever coming to pass. I admire the determination of such a person but can't help but feel sad for his quixotic quest.

I know we will need to make some radical changes to the way we build, consume, govern, and do business to save this world but I'm afraid we probably won't really want to do these things until we're on the brink or past the brink of disaster. Unfortunately that is probably the worst time to make reasoned and rational choices. In such instances immediate survival will be chosen over long term benefits which consequently could make it worse.

Another reason I'm saddened is that even if we could all agree that we needed to redesign our entire world the unintended consequences of such radical overhauls are bound to be disastrous in their own right. You simply cannot remake a world with a single blueprint. There are millions of competing blueprints from which we're all simultaneously building our world. Whenever a single design is chosen it is bound to succeed on many fronts but fail on countless others.


Some of the city designs which Fresco advocates are marvels of rational, mathematically rigid design. All the cities in his world would be nearly identical and their efficiencies would be vastly superior. But what would we also lose? The architecture of a city influences and inspires it's inhabitants. Such a rationally pre-structured design doesn't allow room for a natural cultural growth. In such surroundings one could imagine that the very innovation required to continue improving the world and to grow culture would be diminished or lost.

This Week in Political Elections

Russian President Putin seems to have played every trick in the book to get a mandate from the people to remain as de facto dictator. Some complained that even elections under the old Soviets weren't this corrupt. Did anybody really think that someone like Putin was going to give up that much power that easily?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez didn't seem to cheat nearly as much as Putin did and consequently didn't win his bid to remain as dictator. He was holding a referendum to attain the power to remain as President for life, take control of the Central Bank and enact legislation at his discretion without parliamentary assent. He lost the vote 49% to 51% but remains in power until 2013.

Peter Garrett was the lead singer for Australian rock band Midnight Oil. The fiercely political singer was frighteningly energetic on stage when I saw them in concert about 20 years ago. He has apparently been in parliament for the past three years and was this week appointed as the Environment Minister after his Labour Party ousted the global warming denying and Bush ally John Howard.

Another pop star politician Gilberto Gil of Brazil is resigning as Culture Minister to attend to an illness.

Enjoy the videos below.

Filler' Up - Coal or Nuclear?

If I decide to ever buy another car I thought it might be an electric one like the Zenn (Zero Emission Zero Noise) vehicle. They don't spew any exhaust, take up less space and are completely silent. Switching to vehicles like these would have profound effects on life in a city like Toronto. But wide scale adoption of these could lead to some unintended results. Remember the massive blackout during the summer of 2003? It was possible because every summer our air conditioners overextend the capacity of our electricity suppliers. Population growth coupled with a booming economy means that electricity supply problems will get worse not better.

So what would happen if a significant number of drivers switched to electric cars? Our current power delivery systems would become swamped. Whenever we need to buy more electric power on the open market our suppliers tend to purchase it from US sources which are almost all derived from burning coal. These cars would in effect be be powered by coal. One way around this would be to do as the French do and invest in new nuclear plants but then these cars would ultimately run on nuclear energy and a lot of people can't come around to supporting Nuclear energy.


No matter how you slice it there will need to be massive reductions in everyday power consumption if innovations like the Zenn car are going to be effectively adopted. So maybe hybrid is still a better choice. It's too bad because I had my eye on this electric car below which is made by Tesla Motors.

Making Green Lemonade

Some people have a knack for making the best of a bad situation. I'm not talking about Mary Tyler Moore whose character "can take a nothing day and suddenly make it all seem worth while." For some people calamities, catastrophes and disasters aren't always so bad.




Disaster Capitalism - The new book by Naomi Klein is a follow up to her huge hit No Logo. In the new work she claims that political powers exploit disasters of many kinds to push through legislation that would otherwise be met with much resistance in safe and peaceful settings. The implication is that there is actually a disincentive for some to seek peace and incentives for them to sustain disaster scenarios so that they can enact legislation like The Patriot Act after 911 or bring forth the privatization of the school system in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Military Industrial Complex - More than just the simple opportunism of disaster capitalism, the Military Industrial Complex is a much wider construct that is said to be more or less designed to encourage war in order to profit from it's ability to destroy capital which then needs to be recapitalized or replaced.



Measuring Wealth with GDP - Gross Domestic Product measures the value of all products that are produced within an economy. This positively counts product growth without taking into consideration the possibly more costly side effects of the events that created the demand. This is why such a terrible thing as an oil spill will increase the GDP of an economy because many costly products will be produced to nominally clean up the environmental mess and to replace the oil liner.

Blood for Oil - This seems to creatively mix all of the above. It's a fact that war in the Middle East has greatly benefited the petroleum sector as well as companies that sell their services to the US Government. It might be more than coincidental that many of these companies have close ties to the offices of the US Executive and many of the people in their cabinet.

Disaster Fundraising - Lobbyists are known to exaggerate their causes in order to get the money flowing. It seems that those in non-profit, charitable or humanitarian organizations are not beyond this approach. The UN has just had to restate their AIDS numbers for Africa. It seems that the incidence of the disease has been over reported for quite some time now. Stephen Lewis is disappointed but puts it into perspective by explaining that even these new lower numbers are so staggeringly large that it shouldn't discourage us from further investment in his efforts to eradicate the disease.

The Upside of Down - This is the title of a book by Thomas Homer Dixon who writes that not only can catastrophes lead to positive change, they sometimes are necessary for such change. When it comes to Global Warming it seems that this has not registered with most people as a catastrophe yet and therefore not much is being done. Because such shifts happen so gradually it is hard for the human imagination to put it in the same category as a catastrophe that occurs over a holiday weekend. Some are trying to make this link by pointing out that many of these more immediate disasters may intensify and become more common as a result of Global Warming.

Making Green from Green - Despite what Ayn Rand has so poorly written, I don't think greed should be the only primary motive for economic activity. But someone trying to convince people who are swayed by greed could use this motivation to their benefit. I have been trying to convince people of the benefits of green initiatives using the language and practices of a business case. It is not hard to make a compelling case that accepting the challenges of adhering to initiatives like the Kyoto Accord will create massive opportunities for those jurisdictions who lead the way. The innovations required to succeed can and will be sold to those who lag behind. That's why the levers of incentives and disincentives which are held by our governments should be pulled now before we get left behind.

What if We're not Responsible for Global Warming?

Soon it will be even more difficult for those who deny the human responsibility for Global Warming to keep a straight face while making their arguments. A report is about to be published by an exceedingly impressive list of respected scientists outlining the state of the globe and prospects for the future with regard to climate change (as the deniers prefer to call it). The report comes just in advance of the meeting of industrial nations to follow up on the Kyoto accord. USA, the most important signatory of that treaty has of course abandoned it and justified doing so with some very poorly done, lobbyist sponsored science.

Canada has actually dramatically increased it's greenhouse emissions since signing the accord and the Conservative government tried initially to minimize or debate the truth of global warming, but even they have had to come around and might even surprise some people in the next wave of treaties. They are probably doing this more as a reaction to recent polls that suggest Canadians are becoming more green every day and are even willing to vote for the Green Party. Research also shows that we are willing to pay more for green products and services and would even pay higher taxes if it went toward cleaner environmental policies. Elizabeth May is well positioned here with her party, the Liberal party is making changes to their policies, while the NDP need to find a way to balance their commitments to labour and heavy manufacturing to become greener or they will be left in the dust.

I have always been amused by those who deny that we humans are having a dangerous effect on the climactic shifts of our planet. I understand science is always open to debate and I would always encourage it. The evidence in this case is so dramatically shifted towards one set of theories over another that anyone who argues the weaker case would need to be seen as a maverick in the best case, a quack in a middling case or a fraud in the worst case. I don't mind that some middling science is poorly done and can create false conclusions. I accept that this happens but these instances are easily shown to be faulty and soon discarded. The worst cases are those that take money from lobbyists and then fraudulently produce custom results. These people are the scourge not only of science but of all things dear to humanity and they should be vigorously exposed.

As for the best case scenario in which a scientist authentically engages in science and insists on findings that go contrary to commonly accepted understanding. These people often point to the examples of Galileo or Copernicus as their models. For every Galileo or Copernicus there have been thousands upon thousands of people who also went against commonly accepted notions of science and were never in the end proven to be right simply because they were wrong. Just because you're a maverick and everyone thinks you're too extreme doesn't automatically make you right. There's the distinct and more likely possibility that you might just be an idiot.

Let's take the extremely unlikely possibility that one of these deniers of Global Warming is not a middling and incompetent scientist but is rather a maverick, does science authentically without skewing his results to suit lobbyist or political masters and arrives at the conclusion that Global Warming is not caused by Humans. If this remotely unlikely possibility which I am in principle willing to entertain is true then what? Even if this were the case how could anyone deny the benefits of removing millions and millions of tonnes of pollutants from the atmosphere, making the air fresher to breathe, reducing toxin originating cancers, birth defects and other ailments? How could anyone deny the benefits of conducting business more efficiently and the creation of new innovative technologies that would result from these reductions? Even if we're wrong about the real cause of Global Warming which is really not in debate, then we still need to go full steam ahead in reducing emissions for all of the other benefits that would result.

Welcome to Canada

This is wrong on so many levels but is yet another example where Little Brother is at work keeping an eye on the system. The video footage above was confiscated by the RCMP from the person who shot it and attempts were made to keep it from him and the public until a legal challenge was successfully made.


This poor guy Dziekanski on his first ever flight, after 10 hours of waiting in a terminal with no food or water and clearly distressed meets his end at the hands of some pretty unprofessional police work. All of this could have so easily been avoided:

If someone had noticed that a man had been walking around the luggage area for over 6 hours.

If the airport had a PA system in the luggage area his mother would have been able to contact him.

If one of the staff just walked fifty feet into the area they could have found him waiting for his mother.

If the police just slowed down to assess the situation before acting and unnecessarily tasering him.

This last point is really disappointing. Does it have to be that the type of person who works in law enforcement needs necessarily to be of a thuggish nature? It's as if some of these guys are just looking for any excuse to engage in some ass-kicking. This is an exceptional situation in which the incident was caught on camera. There are countless such incidents that never see the light of day. Clearly these men are either very poorly trained or not following their training.


On a lighter note:

Fuck Death

Here is an organization that we could all get behind. The Fuck Death Foundation's mission statement outlines that they are "dedicated to the elimination of death through the generation and distribution of funds to strategically selected causes and initiatives worldwide." They plan on seeking official charitable organization status.




I've been saying for some time that we need to start debating the issues around the likelihood that technologies will arrive within our lifetimes to extend life much beyond the averages we decry today. Stem cell research and nanotechnology alone could offer therapies for many diseases as well as ways to slow down if not stop or reverse aging. The upheavals that could result from such a possibility would make the industrial revolution look like a tiny blip in sociopolitical development. Like most new desirable technologies the wealthy will have primary access to them. Can you think of a more motivating reason to revolt than the chance to attain immortality?

Ray Kurzweil believes we will have technologies that will allow human immortality to be possible in about 20 years. So I think the Fuck Death Foundation's birth might be well timed to serve a goal that will soon come to be taken more seriously.

This Monarch's Not Smiling

Hugo Chavez is a shit disturber, there's no denying it. He pisses off a lot of people especially oil people like the Bush clan. Recently he got into a spat with King Juan Carlos of Spain calling him a fascist. When he tried to interrupt during a conference the Monarch yelled at him to "shut up" on live TV.

Just an excuse for me to dig up something cool from the 80's.

Abecedarians - Smiling Monarchs (1985)

Conservative Rant

It's easy to be lulled into complacency with this Conservative government. They mostly stay out of trouble by being bland, boring and uncontroversial. Every now and then you're brought down to earth when you realize who these people really are. This past week we've had a series of developments that should give us pause.

1. They have brought forth a series of massive tax cuts and reduced the GST by 1 percent. Some economists think that some of that tax reward could have been better used as debt retirement or increased program funding after years and years of cuts. But it seems that nearly every economist including those strongly aligned with the Conservative party have said unequivocally that cutting the GST makes absolutely no sense at all.

2. The Chief of Defense Rick Hillier spoke openly about Afghanistan saying that it would take at least a decade to sort out that mess. This doesn't jibe with the official party line so he's been admonished and told to keep quiet. A few years ago some Military men gave George Bush more reasonable estimates of requirements and time lines for war in Iraq and they were sent packing or silenced and the results have been horrific.

3. Mark Warner was recently disqualified by the Conservative Party from running in Toronto Centre against Bob Rae even though he was democratically elected by his riding association. It seems they didn't take too kindly to him having opinions of his own about income and equality.

4. The Harper government refused to intervene in the case of a Canadian on death row in Montana citing that they didn't want to have such a monster like him back in Canada to serve a life sentence. The fact of the matter is that this person could serve life in Montana if he were given clemency and there would be no need to have him back in Canada. This is all beside the point. If you are a Canadian citizen you have the expectation to be defended by your country in accordance with your countries sense of justice and it is clear that Canadians consider capital punishment to be an abhorrent and uncivilized practice. What's surprising is that so many of the prominent Conservative Party members actually publicly support capital punishment.

5. The Mulroney saga got more interesting this week. It seems that he had accepted $300,000 in cash payments in secret meetings in hotel rooms and then delayed paying taxes on them until it became quite clear that people were going to find out about it. This kind of 3rd world opportunism is embarrassing to Canada and should be exposed and punished. And I know it's not just the Conservatives who have shady dealings in their recent past.

6. The Harper government continues to obfuscate and stall when it comes to environmental action. The old Progressive Conservative Party was much more palatable even with Mulroney at the helm when it came to environmental issues. With such a name one has to wonder what it is that the Conservatives are actually trying to conserve.