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…
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
The Financial Stability Board, backed by the G20 members, was set up in 2009 after the financial meltdown to monitor and regulate international banking.
Last Friday they announced their list of banks “too big to fail”; this list includes twenty-nine banks. It probably comes as no surprise that many of those listed were also recipients of some of the largest bailouts from their respective governments. These include:
- Bank of America – $45 b
- Bank of New York Mellon – $3 b
- Citigroup – $45 b
- Commerzbank – $11 b
- Deutsche Bank – $12 b
- Goldman Sachs – $10 b
- JB Morgan Chase - $247 m
- LLoyds Banking Group – $60b
- Morgan Stanley – $10 b
- Royal Bank of Scotland - $70 b
- State Street – $2 b
- UBS AG – $65 b
- Wells Fargo $25 b
Add all of that up and you have over 350 Billion dollars of bailout; not including many other international banks I haven’t listed that were also recipients of bailout money or at least ‘protected’ in one way or another from the consequences of their selfish and stupid gambles.
These banks, their directors and staff continue to be the beneficiaries of huge profits and disgusting bonus rewards, while the rest of us work our collective asses off to pay for their mistakes. This is a level of payback that will see us through most of our lifetimes and more than likely into our children’s lifetimes.
The reason we are in such a mess is because when things started to go wrong in 2007/8, all of these banks were considered ‘too big to fail’ and were handed barrow loads of cash with no strings attached. Even while taking this money, the bankers continued to pay themselves huge salaries and ridiculous bonuses, rewarding themselves for their ‘success’ with amounts beyond avarice.
And now the FSB is making exactly the same mistake. Lessons from history are often difficult and painful – but now we don’t even learn them after the fact. Parasites like this should be left to fail; they need to learn the lessons and consequences of their own actions.
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana 
It’s been a while since I posted anything – family visiting from England gave me a long and very pleasant vacation – though it’s never long enough of course…
I’m currently(finally) looking at adding a garage to our house and the whole thing seems like a nightmare.
First of all our lot is not ideal for such an endeavor. We have an acre of land but most of it is next to useless for geological and/or topological reasons. The only place that seems to make any kind of sense is at the far-side of the house away from the street. Hardly the best location.
Secondly, the planning requirements for any kind of construction now seem to be ridiculously over the top. Because I want a garage of reasonable size (bigger than a postage stamp it seems…) I have to have an ‘engineered floor’.
What this means is that I have to do the design and drawings, give them to an engineer who will then (rubber) stamp them in exchange for several hundred dollars. Yes, that’s right, I do the work, some engineer stamps them and says “yeah, okay” and they collect a handful of cash. Talk about money for nothing! I really think I’m in the wrong career…
Of course it’s not that simple. Because of the building regulations (codes) here I am supposed to have a minimum twenty feet (feet/inches! Yes, we are back in the stone age!) setback from the front lot line. Now, tell me, who wants a twenty feet driveway in Northern Ontario? That’s right, no one. In my case, with the general topography of our lot, would put my garage underground!
Of course, I can apply for a ‘minor variance’ to bring the garage forward. That only takes a minimum of two months and again costs about seven hundred dollars. No wonder it’s called a ‘setback’.
With that and the actual permit application fees I will have spent around $3000 in bribes fees before a shovel even touches dirt! This seems to be just a money-making scheme for the city and ‘jobs for the boys’ with the engineers.
That also means I can’t possibly get this built this year. Which is infuriating to say the least.
On the other hand I had some good quotes for garage kits from our local Home Hardware store. The price contains pretty much everything and is very reasonable. I tried to get a quote from the local Rona as well for comparison, but they haven’t bothered calling me back – something that I have seen with them several times previously. I really wonder how some of these places manage to stay in business – they certainly don’t seem to want to!
An article published by the NPR reveals the astonishing detail that part of the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq includes $20 billion spent on air-conditioning. This figure was estimated by Brigadier General Steven Anderson, a now -retired chief logistician for the Pentagon.
So let’s see:
- NASA annual budget – $5 bn (2011)
- Estimated cost to finish and Launch James Webb – $3 bn
- Estimated cost to build a space elevator – $6-20 bn
Even this doesn’t scratch the surface of the sheer waste involved here. The article goes on to detail how the fuel to power all this air-conditioning is transported through extremely risky convoys, putting countless lives at on the line.
Of course, you could argue that the soldiers are putting their lives at risk to protect democracy and deserve to be comfortable, though that argument might not stand up to scrutiny. But there’s more to it even than that.
These soldier’s are living in temporary shelters – tents. Now everyone knows that tents aren’t great insulators – anyone who has spent a couple of cold days in one can tell you that. Well, all of these tents could be cheaply insulated using polyurethane foam spray, which cuts energy use by over 90%.
So the U.S. could save lives, cut energy costs, finance all of NASA, a space telescope and go a long way to building a space elevator – just by insulating tents.
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.