dmk
One of the tactics we see regularly in use by governments is “silencing by intimidation” – where opponents of an issue are labelled and dismissed as “extremists”, threatened by legal charges that can’t possibly be upheld and which are aimed purely at trying to silence critics. Now we have the latest “card” in this game, where charities are being threatened with removal of their charitable status if they don’t bow down to Conservative political ideology.
Here in Canada, the Harper government refuses point-blank to engage in any discussion with its critics or opponents. At the last election there were numerous cases where people were removed from Conservative “debates” and presentations for no other reason than the fact that they weren’t fully-paid-up members of the Conservative collective ass-kissing community. Harper and his party can’t tolerate dissent in any form it appears.
Now they’re extending this to threatening charities with the removal of their charitable status simply for supporting causes that go against Conservative policy. Tides Canada, for example, recently had its charitable status threatened for supporting ForestEthics - an organization that opposes the dubious Endbridge pipeline.
The Harper government has called people against the Endbridge pipeline “enemies of the government of Canada”. They’re wrong. I’m an enemy of bullies, of anyone who tries to browbeat, threaten and lie in order to achieve their own selfish goals. I believe in democracy, for everyone, not just the self-serving rich and powerful; if this makes me an “enemy” then we have lost democracy completely.
The pathological Conservative government lists the following as “adversaries”: the media, the biodiesel industry, environmental and Aboriginal groups. “Allies” listed are: Energy companies, the National Energy Board, Environment Canada, business and industry associations.
This isn’t a government representing people; these are the tactics of the bully pure and simple. Even if you agree with the development of the pipeline, this behavior is still wrong. Tell Harper you don’t want a country run by bullies.
“All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.”
- Thomas Jefferson
I’ve been quite a fan of Google for a long time. I remember just how well their search engine brought back results that were relevant and fast. You could pretty much hit the “I Feel Lucky” button and expect to get where you wanted to be every time.
It was also the case that the company itself seemed to be in tune with people; it had its “Do no Evil” policy and swore that it would protect its users’ information and stand up for them in the burgeoning swamp of ruthless Net companies that were playing fast and loose with people’s privacy.
That’s changed. The growth of the web has made the “Lucky” button less of an attractive option, but that’s certainly not Google’s fault. Google is also now going to ‘aggregate’ all data from all of its services – and that certainly is their fault.
When Google talks about its services, look at what they actually mean: Google Search, GMail, YouTube, Alerts, Picassa, Blogger, Maps, Reader (Newsfeeds), Books, Calendar, Groups, Documents and many others. This site lists over one hundred services provided by them. Google now controls and owns a significant part of the entire internet. If this were a regular company in fact we’d likely be talking about monopoly investigations – perhaps Google needs breaking up like the phone companies were when they became too big.
Recently, even before the latest changes to Google’s policies, I’ve found myself growing increasingly concerned about their behavior. They’re reading people’s emails and blogs and then using this information to target advertisements and that seems sneaky to say the least. Would you like someone reading your diary so that they can figure out what to get you for a birthday present? It seems unlikely. Google takes this much further, recording everything you write, every site you go to – all in order to try and sell to you more effectively. If you use an Android based phone they can even link in your physical location in real-time!
I’ve also seen their ads getting much more intrusive and scarily big brother-esque. I look at something on Tiger Direct and literally seconds later I am seeing Google Ads for the same thing. I view a video on YouTube and suddenly start seeing ads for related products and services. Not only that, but these ads ‘follow me’ – so I get the ads at work as well as at home. There’s no separation: my home interests are exposed through ads delivered to me at work. Sure these are ‘mostly harmless’ but I doubt that even Ford Prefect or Zaphod Beeblebrox would be happy with this kind of intrusion.
Think of what someone with criminal intentions could do if they could access that data on you? Google has just as many issues with hackers as any other large web organization and has already suffered ‘data losses’ from such attacks. Remember, when Google talks about such ‘losses’ they’re talking about your personal data leaking out to god knows who.
I keep reading how people now are less concerned with privacy, that they’re happy to share things in ways that would be unheard of ten or twenty years ago. Perhaps this is true, or perhaps it’s that they’ve been brainwashed by ruthless companies into thinking that this is okay, purely for the benefit of said companies. Whatever the case, people have to stop burying their heads in the collective sand and realize that there are consequences for all of these things. Somehow, someday, this profligacy of exposure will come back to bite you on the proverbial fundament.
My own usage of Google is relatively light. I use Reader to pull together newsfeeds, search and Google Docs. There are alternatives for all of these and I will use them. I’m closing my Google account as of today – I suggest everyone else does the same.
If you want to know how to do this – look here.
Recently published research shows that Americans are drinking more soft drinks than ever before, as much as 13 billion gallons each year, making them the “largest source of added sugar and excess calories in the American diet”.
The figures are staggering.
“According to the National Soft Drink Association (NSDA), consumption of soft
drinks is now over 600 12-ounce servings (12 oz.) per person per year. Since the
late 1970`s the soft drink consumption in the United States has doubled for
females and tripled for males. The highest consumption is in the males between
the ages of 12 – 29; they average 1/2 gallon a day or 160 gallons a year.”
Do the math on that.
A can of soft drink contains roughly 10-12 teaspoons of sugar - yep 10 or 12 per can!
Half a gallon represents around five cans per day, giving us around 50 or 60 teaspoons of sugar.
A teaspoon of sugar is around 50 calories. So we’re talking about an intake of around 2500 to 3000 calories per day, just from soft drinks.
That’s the equivalent of the total recommended daily intake for a male to maintain a healthy weight, and that’s without eating anything!
When you also take into account that people are also eating a lot of pre-packaged junk food, in extremely large servings and people are increasingly sedentary, it really is no surprise at all that we’re facing an obesity epidemic.
Of course there are always the rose-tinted spectacle wearers who will say, “It’s all good. No harm, no foul.” etc. The problem is that obesity comes with a very large cost that affects all of us regardless of whether we personally are obese or not.
Recent studies in both the Unites States and Canada reveal the staggeringly high costs of obesity: $140 billion in the U.S. and over $1.8 billion in Canada. Just imagine the benefit to everyone if the healthcare systems received this level of funding increase…
The Earth doesn’t follow a truly circular path around the Sun; the real orbit is slightly elongated in to an oval that is slightly off-center. This means that Earth has an aphelion (furthest point) and a perihelion (closest point).
We just passed the perihelion (January 2/3 for this year) so we’re pretty much about as close as we get.
So why is it so bloody cold!?!?
It was with great sadness that I read about Anne McCaffrey dying. Another creative giant has gone, leaving the world just that little less rich.
Although probably best known for her Pern/Dragon series, they weren’t among my favorites. This doesn’t diminish the books in any way, of course; we all have our own unique likes and dislikes which is what makes life (hmm – bit of a cliche?) so incredibly vibrant. Anne McCaffrey added to this with everything she wrote.
During her career she picked up numerous well-earned accolades including both Hugo and Nebula awards as well as being named a science-fiction ‘Grand Master’ in 2005.
My own personal favorite of her works was the lesser known, but fantastic, “The Ship Who Sang”, the story of a ‘brainship’. Brainships were cyborgs – a human brain controlling a spaceship. The story is one not just of a spaceship that thinks, but of the beautiful mind within that ship and her development and relationships with the world around her.
McCaffrey wove such emotion and vulnerability into her characters and I’m not ashamed to say that I cried at the end of the book.
“In 2020, the vast majority of adults in America will be overweight or obese and
more than half will suffer from diabetes or pre-diabetic conditions, according to
new projections.” Source: Science Daily.
“The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-
guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will
become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of
combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most
thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.” Source: The Guardian.
This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes…again
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-15677595
So Rick Perry, guardian of religious insanity and memory loss, would abolish the Depts. of Commerce, Energy and Education…
I suppose it makes sense really. The banks and financial services markets are
allowed to behave in any way they want and bailed out with public money when they screw up, so why do you need anyone to watch them?
The U.S. steals most of it’s energy reserves from other countries through unfair
trade agreements and allows its citizens to squander them at will, so no need for
any energy regulation either.
And as for education? Well, hell, we know for sure the U.S. doesn’t need any of
that high-falutin nonsense…
Today would have been Carl Sagan’s 77th birthday. My first introduction to him was, like so many people’s, through watching Cosmos in my teens. I was already completely obsessed with anything space, science, or science fiction related when the show aired, and its combination of stunning visuals, atmospheric music, and exploration not only of what makes us human, but also how we relate to the Universe around us, had me hooked immediately. Sagan’s passion and enthusiasm was truly infectious and couldn’t help but overflow the confines of the small screen. For anyone who hasn’t seen it, I have to highly recommend it.
Carl Sagan was a scientist, an explorer, skeptic, humanitarian, and visionary; he is sorely missed. One of the strongest memories I have is his “Pale Blue Dot” speech, which is as poetic as it is humbling. I present it here in tribute to this great man:
“”We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
“The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity — in all this vastness — there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It’s been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
R.I.P. Carl Sagan. 1934-1996
Climate scientists need help
Climate scientists are under attack by unscrupulous pressure groups and various climate change denialists. These groups and individuals use court orders and “Freedom of Information” requests to effectively harass scientists. This witch hunt makes for a hostile environment for the scientists, while also creating doubt in the public perception of climate change, despite the fact that the victims have been cleared of all wrongdoing many times and climate change is accepted as fact by an overwhelming majority of scientists.
Is it any surprise that these denialist groups and individuals are funded heavily by the oil and coal industries and others who have a lot to lose if any real* emissions limits are ever enacted. This gives these groups a virtual bottomless pit of money to continue their actions against scientists and spread their FUD.
Now there’s something that you can do to help. The Climate Science Defense Fund has been set up to raise money for scientists under attack, the money raised goes towards legal fees to fight off these attacks.
* By real I mean not involving carbon ‘trading’ schemes that are nothing but ways to channel money towards fat banks and finance companies in the pretense of doing something about climate change.