Throw out perfectly good goods

"Change your TV, change your life"- an actual slogan. I heard it last night. I'd also like to note, before i continue, the commercials where a woman throws her perfectly good washing machine into a pool so she will need to buy a new "red" one- to enrich her life. Also the commercial where the couple throws their phones into a lake because they are tired of them.

Now i ask you, is a company encouraging the disposal of working cell phones into a lake really showing any consideration for the environment whatsoever?

In their defence: It's drama, its a joke, you're not to take it literally.. . .Fine. . ..But wouldn't this be the same argument racists use to defend themselves? The redneck who uses the word Nig*** in a joke is just kidding right? No big deal. Humour is a very effective way to soften people up to a new idea. It allows the person to convey a message, but hold on to an easy way out. That way, if someone points out the negative aspect of your message, you can easily divert blame by stating that you were not serious and that the message should not be taken lightly. Dudes who pick up lots of girls in bars use this technique constantly; joke to a girl that you want to take her home, if she laughs- you stated your intentions and she did not object. On the other hand if she doesn't find it funny- "hey relax chick, i was just joking". Guys trying to pick up chicks is pretty harmless, things like racism and environmental destruction are not.

What message are these companies softening? Well obviously they're not condoning the disposal of cellphones into lakes, this is not the intention of the ad. However, the ad is intended to convince you to throw out your perfectly good phone- from this they stand to make millions. Now if i joke to a friend that they have an ugly phone and should throw it out; the total environmental destruction from that message would be very very slight. If that message is repeated to millions of people (as happens on TV), the environmental affect is very great. I absolutely guarantee that somewhere some idiot has thrown his phone into a lake as a means of disposal and he got the idea from this commercial. Conversely, the somewhat smarter portion of the population disposed on their phones into a landfill when they tired of the colour.

The Alkaline Battery Hoax

Repeatedly disposing of everyday alkaline batteries is completely unnecessary. Its a perfect example of misleading the public in the interests of profit. The environmental effect and the wasted resources from this corporate lie are devastating. Sure there are cleaner methods of disposal being developed in some communities- but that doesn't fix the problem. Improve the product not its disposal; its like fixing a leaky faucet by improving the drain.

Common Batteries can be recharged as safely and effectively as "rechargeable" batteries.

Alkaline batteries all carry a label warning about leaks and explosions. Damaging a household battery is just about as dangerous and squishing a lemon- its a marketing tactic using fear. The technology to make a charger for regular alkaline batteries is incredibly simple. There once was a charger on infomercials, very briefly. I'm sure the company was shut down. There are plenty of people on the internet who have built their own chargers- look it up if you like. Personally, i can't be bothered to build one, nor do i have the right tools or skills- but if they had it at Canadian Tire i would buy one for sure. These are my choices: buy terribly over priced "rechargeable" batteries, or, since im often short on cash, buy the generic coppergizers and throw, throw, throw them away.

Don’t blame people, blame Walmart for employee death.

When you're in a mob, you don't have a lot of choices- its either keep moving or fall victim to a trampling yourself. Walmart is the cause of their employee's death; surely his family has already received a massive settlement to make the matter go away. Since there is no union at walmart, there is no one to argue in defense of employee safety here. This will be summed up to people being inhumane, oh and by the way it happened at a walmart (but could have been anywhere).

For a price, this mob could have been well contained and controlled, but profit is paramount to Walmart.

If you're going to whip up a frenzy, you'd better have proper barriers in place, employees trained on mob mentality safety issues and heavy, heavy security. Rock concerts do this, so do political rallies, why is walmart allowed to let an unsupervised mob form in their parking lot?

Walmart is just as responsible as the night club owners who cause death by having improper emergency exits, or the miscreant that encourages the start of a riot.

Jack Layton for Prime Minister

Conservatives are reading that heading and saying “dear god not this again”

If the liberals and NDP do form a coalition, they had better be very careful who they select as PM. Dion has already said he is stepping down; if he doesn’t feel he’s fit to lead the party- how can we expect him to lead the country? The other 3 liberal contenders were not candidates for PM. To give them the job would seem to circumvent democracy- not that we really have a democracy here in Canada.

No, the only choice would be Layton. He’s the only one who actually ran in
the election and maintains that he’s up to the job. To bad the liberals would never let it happen, they would never give up the power- even when its ill designed. That’s what Paul Martin’s government was all about.

"Grassroots"

Another term falling victim to language manipulation in the interest of political gain. Examine the metaphor. Many roots of blades of grass working together to grow into a lawn; many many small additions to the whole, together can create a powerful total. So ‘grassroots’ funding would be many many small sources of funding coming together to create one large pool of money.

Harper is always talking about his ‘grassroots’ campaign fundraising. The budget they recently presented eliminated government funding for political parties, meaning all parties would have to rely on their individual supporters for all campaign funds. The opposition parties are very upset with this because they know that the conservative ‘grassroots’ fundraising is far superior to their own.

So, it leaves the question, why is conservative ‘grassroots’ the most effective? Only recently have they been flirting with majorities, but Harper’s been going on about his ‘grassroots’ since the party was much less popular. Therefore its not by quantity of blades of grass that the conservative lawn is much greener. So where the hell is the conservative party getting all this green? It can only be explained by the quality of the roots. Conservatives must get more funding per source, each root being stronger on its own.

Well, conservative voters are traditionally older and wealthier. They have more money to pass along to the party sure, but that can’t be the only explanation. There have to be a few roots in that lawn that are very very large. Its no secret that the conservatives have many ties in business and receive much of their support from corporate sources.

Sorry but that is NOT ‘grassroots’ fundraising, its corporate. You can’t have a lawn made up of 50 giant blades of grass, it makes no sense. ‘Grassroots’ is a metaphor wherein the many weak bond together to become strong, its not applicable to the many strong bonding together to become even stronger. This is a traditionally lefty term, and Harper has brilliantly stolen it. It makes his party seem like it derives it greatest strength from the people which is total BS; the conservatives are strong because they have a leader whose great at playing the game of politics and a corporately stocked war chest for elections.

I’m sure Harper also can’t resist referring to his party with a term that sounds both populist and environmental.

My Point Exactly.

My Point Exactly.

Please see my last post also. . .

A mob of people desperate to get into Wal-Mart trample a worker to death as he waits to unlocks the door at 5am. Other employees try to rescue him, the mob continues pouring into the store. Even as police try to do CPR, the crowd doesn't relent and pushes and shoves the officers all in the interest of getting inside. These animals tore down the front doors of a store. Makes me think of those horror movies where the salivating crowd of undead tears down a building to eat at the sweet sweet brains inside.

Maybe a pack of dogs, did i already use that analogy?

Other parts of the world, people get trampled when crowds run from danger or towards safety. North America?, The desire to shop,literally, drives us to murder. . ..Happy Holidays!

Its all a sham my friends, we’re not all going to be out of work living in our cars. North Americans have one quality that guarantees our economic survival- we are the perfect consumers. Global conglomerates have invested fortune after fortune for generations convincing us to be the perfect little shoppers. We’ve been meticulously studied and prodded. They know how to sell to us, where to sell to us; they’ve been blasting us with their messages since birth. Think about it, we know the lyrics to jingles, we buy cheap equipment doomed to break constantly- we’ll wait for hours in the cold for a store to open when the latest crap is made available.

Then there’s the infrastructure. Look at a company like Walmart, with the reach and market saturation they’ve got in the USA. Do you think a company like that would want to pack it in and move out. Of course not, sure there is potentially much more consumption to be had elsewhere and they’re expanding abroad, but North American consumption is all set to go. The stores are here everywhere and we’re all salivating at the mouth to get in.

People in other parts of the world aren’t nearly as addicted to shopping as we are, they’re more like our grandparents. One set of dishes washed, none of this paper and plastic shit. A can opener that never broke. Baths instead of long showers. Our corporate masters have too much of a vested interest in this population, they know they can shit any garbage on us and we’ll scoop it up like dogs. They’ve got to keep us working to make this possible. These “economic downturns” are just opportunities for them to freak us out and make it okay that we didn’t get a raise this year, or that we took a terrible job and count it as a blessing. The working man’s slice is always shrinking.

Greatest Depression Ever!

Worst part of the news is the sympathy crap and the disturbing shit- pet care and traffic accidents. Celebrity news of course being comprised of both crap and shit. When it comes to the real stories, the poorer and more foreign you are, the less tragic is your hardship. . . Unless of course something really freaky happened. When there is a disaster, its difficult to get resources and trained people into the region- a bottleneck develops around availability of local transport and expertise. How many educated people with modern equipment descend upon suffering populations purely for the sake of recording them? Can you imagine if only one guy brought a camera and everyone else brought med packs?

Major news media does a great disservice to society. They're biased by their corporate masters. They profit from disasters and suffering. They decide the fate of elections, promote fear and fill the public consciousness with useless nonsense. The people running these "news" sources have so many other motivations, that spreading truth based knowledge becomes a very low priority. some examples:

Martha Stewart and Conrad Black. These people are crooks, pure and simple. They are no different than the teenager who works at the variety store up the street and sneaks $20 from the cash register, or the dude with the green visor who fixes horse races. Martha and Conrad stole and defrauded on a much larger scale, but they also have strong media ties- so what happens? They remain darlings. I remember the out-pooring of crying fans for Martha in prison and John McCain surely welcomed Black's presidential endorsement. - -ha ha, how's your candidate now bitch!?

Here's another one: "worst economic downturn since the great depression". Harper said it, how many times did the news take it and repeat it. This is a completely useless statement. All it does is conjure up visions of people selling apples on streetcorners, it has almost no relevance today whatsoever. The world is a completely different place than it was 80 years ago. Somebody gives an analogy that has a strong image and freaks people out and the news always jumps on it.


In their defense, maybe they're just giving the public what they want. "News that matters to you". If truth matters to you, you could try googling your news or getting an approximation from many sources- but this will take up much of your time. Easier just to flip on the first 15 mins of the 6:00 news and hear "great depression", which should scare people into cinching their wallets and slowing the economy even more. Well at least we know to go out and buy an apple cart, sell one of the children, and start learning how to make cabbage soup.

Good One

Here’s a good trick. Price of oil has potential to go up; gas prices immediately go up by a larger percentage. . . but. . . .oil prices go down in reality, gas prices very slowly and reluctantly go down by a smaller percentage.

They’re just always winning, pure and simple. It’s this perfect industry where it doesn’t seem to matter whether things swing massively one way or the other. Every change in supply or demand is a good thing. I remember, back when i had a car, how everyone kept complaining about how gas was going to hit the $1 a litre benchmark. Of course its been there and above for years; they’ve gotten us used to the idea. Now the price of oil has come down and so has gas, but only to a lesser degree. Eventually, we’ll start hearing about how “the price of oil is going to go back up!”; based on this potential the price of gas will then increase while oil again stays behind.

The price of a litre is slowly drifting closer to the price of a barrel.

That’s the real number to watch, wait until oil is at $50 and gas is at $1. Then we can complain about that benchmark, and nothing will happen.

Corporate Welfare

The North American auto industry is collapsing, it seems as though no amount of propping up is going to help it re-claim its former glory. People will keep making cars here in Canada and the US, but on a much smaller scale. The big three are pleading with the public and the government to save them from disaster. Many people’s jobs and investments hang in the balance. Maybe this stems from a simple twist in accountability that’s crippling us:

Within any corporation, those with the most responsibility have the least to loose in bankruptcy.

Sure sure, loosing 100 million dollars is monetarily more than 10000 dollars, but if you’ve only got 10k- loosing everything is far more devastating than a billionaire loosing a fraction of his wealth. Even if say Richard Branson were to lose 99% of his wealth, he could still live out his days in luxury, never having to work a single day. If i lost 99% i’d be homeless.

Sadly this is what always seems to happen. A company goes bankrupt, who gets paid of first? Creditors (rich people). Second? Investors and upper management (rich people). Last? Workers and pensioners. . ..The rich don’t actually go bankrupt when their companies go bankrupt. Sure they may go down a few notches, but they’re not going to experience any real suffering like the pensioner who gets shafted, or the young parents who loose their jobs. If the rich actually needed to give a shit about running a business properly, this wouldn’t be happening.

CEO’s are pleading for help, and we’re forced to listen because we’re the only ones who actually stand to loose something. Open your own goddamn pockets you wealthy bastards! The public is tired of shelling out corporate welfare because somebody’s great great nephew is too inbred and pampered to understand rudimentary concepts like market demand.

Owning Life

Mapping the human genome. This is incredibly precise. It’s this precision that makes it so dangerous- if gives the owners of the code too much power. Forget taking over the world with armies, or economics, or culture- the world could be conquered with the birth of a single baby. A new messiah of human design.

Look at what they are currently doing with genetically modified plants. I’ve seen the canola fields in Saskatchewan, absolutely nothing but canola plants and dirt. First they design a modified plant that can resist a specific brand of herbicide and pesticide. Then they soak the field with the chemicals; the only thing that survives is the crop. It’s terrible for health and environment, but that’s another issue- look up Monsanto and Greenpeace.

Plants can also be developed to resist natural enemies, to grow stronger and longer- even to spread themselves out and decimate other species. It won’t be long before they can take this type of thing into insects. An army of genetically identical bees that travel the earth pollenating. A race of super-dragonfiles that would breed and spread like wildfire, eat the world’s mosquitoes, then eventually die away from lack of food. - - -The Ultimate BugZapper! What about fish? I think i saw that in a movie, replace the ocean’s schools with genetically modified fish that could breed and grow so fast we could never over fish them. We’re already raising fish inland on farms, why not think on the larger scale? Stock the oceans with genetic super-fish.

I suppose the thinking here is that when we’re thrown a curveball, like a disease killing off all our chickens, the best defense is to create new types of chickens that can survive the disease. Thereby assuming humans can do a better job than nature at dealing with a curveball. This works only up until something comes along that the new design is not immune to. Suppose the world is full of only a few genetic types of chickens, and something comes along that can wipe them all out- thats the end of chickens on earth. Natural selection doesn’t get to step in and save the species. There is no rare genetic strands of chicken out there with that extra something making them immune. There is no strong to survive.

So wait, how to take over the world with a single baby? Well, it probably wouldn’t happen overnight through genetics- sorry. Maybe you could design a superhuman smarter and stronger than anyone else- but it seems inevitable to loose control of anything you create which is smarter than yourself. . .. So i propose to the plotting evil billionaire, design yourself one male son with something genetic that’s within your control, lets say resistance to a certain poison and compliancy to evil schemes. Give the baby tons of money and a pretty face, make sure he does lots of breeding. The family waits until enough generations have passed after him that his gene pool has expanded large enough to sustain its own reproduction. . . ..They then flood the planet with the poison. . . …the only thing remaining are your evil offspring, the soy beans and the canola. -world conquered.

I suppose this is already happening. Money gets passed down through generations and it seems to be terrific for helping avoid disease and poison.

Information Storage

Information Storage

We can all have a good chuckle about 'computers' back during their conception. Mammoth machines filling an entire room just to accomplish a few simple computations. Today, processors, hard drives, all computer components seem to relentlessly get faster and smaller. So where will it end? Is there a size limit to information?

No, it doesn't seem so. The current method of information storage is binary, 1's and 0's. Strings of these two digits are constantly read by the computer's components. Each number string tells the switches within the component to turn either on or off thereby controlling the status of the component. One string might tell your speakers to get quieter, another string may be telling your monitor to display an 'R'. To store this information, you need to have a place to lay many many strings of 1's and 0's. This is done on anything like hard drives, memory sticks, and dvd's. The way the string of numbers is stored is by having tiny little switches in sequence on the storage device. Each switch is either on or off; on being a 1. and off being the 0. When data is stored, the switches are 'written' to display the sequence of numbers. When 'read', the sequence of numbers is re-created from the arrangement of the switches. The reason information storage keeps getting smaller is because they keep finding ways to cram these little switches closer and closer together.

But there seems to be a cap on this. For one, binary is pretty limited. Each switch is only able to convey a very simple message: on or off. Suppose each switch were to have three possible states, or five, or twelve. Certainly a switch with more states could convey more information. Binary works by positively or negatively charging switches. Those are the two states that make up its on or off, so how would we go about having considerably more possible states for our switch?

Its been suggested that the orbits of electrons around protons in atoms could be used as a new type of switch- remember chemistry? . . ..The idea of reading and writing info to the switch would remain the same. Imagine your computer keeps a real keen clock and microscope following an atom its using for information storage- this is your read device, like a hard drive's laser. With write devices today, electrical pulses are sent to manipulate the states of the switches, this type of thing could also be done to write info onto the atom. The whole process would be fairly similar; a write device sends a message in to set the switch and a read device sends out the same message by looking at the state of the switch.

Unlike todays binary methods, storage of information on these atomic orbits seems limitless. The electrons are moving along a sphere. There are an infinite amount of locations on a sphere. With binary storage, it is much more difficult to envision how we could store info at smaller than atomic sizes. Sure, an atom itself might be able to have two states, but for the same size we could have an infinite amount of states if we go the spherical electron orbit method.

With a limited switch, like in binary, you are always forced to find new physical items which can be switched on and off- if you want to go smaller. We never get more out of our switches, we only find ways to cram them closer together. Once the switch itself is infinite, there is no need to pack switches closer together- through refinement or our 'read/write' we can hold increasingly complex information within each switch.

This is of course way way off in the future, we're not even close. Besides, remember all the hoopla about getting computers switched over to 4 digit years? Imagine that times a billion for scrapping 1's and 0's. . . ..Binary doesn't even have a deadline!

TV

I don't watch it much, actively, but its often on in the background while im computerizing- which is frequently. The one format i will sit and actually watch is the prime time animated show. i can't help it; Simpsons got me addicted when i was still young and impressionable. So here it is, absolutely defined, unchallengeable: a listing of the animated shows from best to worst.

South Park - #1. This is the best satire available on television. Everything that happens on the show, relates back to the plot. Usually, at some point in the episode, the parody becomes obvious to the viewer; not because we're told what's being criticized outright, but because every event in the show gives us more information that relates back to the general idea. That's the beauty of a show where everything is included in the plot- there is ample time to ease the audience into an idea. Thats how the makers of this show are able to make such specific and justified criticisms of things they don't like. Its how good arguments are formed; this follows from this follows from this. . . , so you're one of these.

Simpsons - #2. The one thing Simsons has over South Park is the use of random, non plot funniness. I know, I know, i just said in the last paragraph that that was a bad thing. Simpsons does an excellent job of finding the balance. They'll add randomness, but not so much as it takes away from the plot. Problem is, they're sometimes trying to find this balance in their humour and politics as well; Criticisms don't quite go far enough, jokes are a little too tame. Don't get me wrong, they were my favourite for a very long time, and i still think they're terrific.

Futurama - #3. This is the ultimate dreamers show. What couldn't happen on Futurama. The concept is brilliant. Absolutely anything could happen to the character's surroundings and it would be completely justified. Even the characters themselves can be killed off or whatever- its the future, its outerspace, there will always be a way to bring about normalcy. Many people don't like this show, well maybe the writing staff hasn't used this great concept to its full capacity. Its also hard to get into a show that's so unreliable as far as delivery of new episodes.

King of the Hill - #4. Come on. This show is awesome. But, its a much subtler delivery of humour, and unfortunately many people dont get it at all. Like South Park, they criticize the evils of society, but they do it from the point of view of the everyday person instead of tackling the issue head on; Hank battles 'Walmart' in his home town, the South Park kids would have flown to the moon to take out 'Walmart' central command. These Texan characters are the most like real people. But thats usually the complaint, "why are they even animated at all?". . . . Well sorry, that would be impossible. Everyone on the show is ugly by TV standards, these are normal, unattractive, people. What live show could do that? No one would be able to stomach watching it. Can you imagine live actors for Beavis and Butthead! Even when you put Jim Belushi at the center of a sitcom, you surround him with better looking people to balance it out. . . .Besides, Mike Judge's animation is hilarious- its a big part of what makes the show so funny even if it doesn't take the characters to impossible places.

American Dad - #5. This show is pretty good. Its fairly political. Its a credit that there are some unique characters in this show despite the fact that this show is fairly new compared to the rest of them. I like how the characters will go to unbelievable lengths to accomplish their goals, but there seems to be a trend developing. They've done too many episodes where the dad will go away to trick the mother and proove a point, but miscommunication ensues. All in though, any show with Patrick Stewart is alright with me.

Family Guy - #6. I almost can't watch this show. A new episode, well i guess, but that's it. They've just taken the whole randomness thing way too far. Nothing pertains to anything else; the plot is an afterthought. They constantly do these long winded gags where everything stops moving and we're supposed to laugh at how long they're holding the joke- "i can't believe it! I think Peter is going to wince about his injured shin for a whole 2 minutes this time. . .that's hilarious!!!" Followed by the many running gags- Peter fights a chicken, slags about female basketball, the annoying piano guys they keep promising to get rid of. Saturday Night Live type sketch-comedies have always relied on running gags, but every week sketch-comedies are stuck with building something from the same actors and the same props and sets. Not to mention SNL is over an hour long. The sky is the limit for writers of animated shows, they shouldn't need to reuse the same gag over and over. Are the makers of family guy lazy or unoriginal? And all the cutaway scenes, dear god. A child could trace the animation over the opening scene of Back to the Future or whathaveyou- gluing in Peter's body. "Brain, remember that time i was a carrot?" Pick a random movie or event, plaster in Peter- there's a 30 sec joke. The only reason this show is so successful is because it obviously receives the most marketing investment. Seems suspicious to me that the networks push this show the most when its the least creative, least satirical, and least intelligent of the 6 shows.

universe 2

Universe 2

Hey there, back to explaining the universe. I'll post 'Your Universe 1' as a comment in case you forgot what i wrote back in sept.

The old model of the universe came from Euclid and Newton: a 3D grid with time moving forward at an unflinchingly steady speed. As simple as a stack of graph paper under your alarm clock. This old model worked well for a very long time. Even when Fizeau discovered the uniformity of the speed of light, no one noticed a thing- until Einstein.

Einstein did some thought experiments that showed how Fizeau's discovery was impossible within the old model of the universe. When moving near the speed of light, the stack of graph paper starts to bend, and the alarm clock changes speeds.

-----Space
Imagine i am driving at near the speed of light past the earth. At the exact moment i pass you on earth, we both turn on giant flashlights pointed in the direction i am driving. What would you see? Well, remember light moves the same speed in all reference frames, so you would see the two beams of light moving away from us both equally. But what happens once i've moved forward a distance? You still see two beams extending out equally, but somehow my beam would seem shorter than yours since the starting point of my beam moves forward as i move forward. The same end points but your start point precedes mine. got it?

Remember the simple equation: distance= time X speed. Speed of light is fixed, and the time of the experiment is whatever we make it to be, so thats fixed as well. Somethings got to give, the only variable remaining is distance. You and i have both turned our beams on for the same amount of time, and our beams are travelling at the same speed; distance itselt must be able to fluctuate.

Hey, distance is space. You measure 9 feet with a tape measure, you're measuring 9 feet of space right? What Einstein showed was how those measurements were wrong according to anyone moving in relation to yourself. Space itself can be scrunched up or stretched out.

Its a theory of course, but there needs to be a theory. The problem of light exists whether you like it or not. Somethings got to give, since space seems to be the only thing left in the equation, space must be the variable thats got some give. or so the theory goes. . .

Ok, uh, i thought i could do 'time' in this one as well but my head hurts. next one i guess.

So since i took up reading. . .

Well, i'm no scientologist (that's a smart person word for scientist right), but i've been spouting off about how fantastic irradiation is for years. Irradiation: its the process they've used to keep that super bacon edible for months in your cupboard, and its very similar to how the meat in your can of ravioli stays safe. Basically, either cook the shit out of something or hit it with radiation, and then immediately throw it into a perfectly sealed container. If there is absolutely no bacteria in the packaged food, then there is no possibility of bacteria growing and making people sick.

I started thinking, I'll bet there are further applications for a devise that reliably wipes out all living organisms within a certain space.

Well the laundromat first off, who isn't grossed out by the idea of billions of parasites living in your pillows and blankets. Throw a pillow in the $5 irradiator machine, and it comes out parasite free (give it a fluff to knock out the dead bodies). Pool size- the irradiation blanket. No more need for chlorine. House size- ultimate exterminator, nothing alive in your house. No bugs, no rodents, no parasites- nothing. (Find a sitter for the pets). Jean Luc Picard almost died when his enterprise went through a similar devise. They didn't call it irradiation though, some type of shmackmalan ray or something. . ..

Last night at work that raw milk farmer from the papers made a speech. The man has been charged for selling unpasteurized milk. Defiantly, immediately following his court appearance, he drank milk outside the courthouse- pretty damn cool. He's totally in league with the wrong crowd though, supported by the same people who push for more organics and natural foods. Problem is, milk doesn't work that way, yuppies can't just go out and drink unpasteurized milk. Unless you've always been drinking it, its probably gonna make you really sick.

But here's the thing creepier than the bugs in your pillow. People drank unpasteurized milk for thousands of years, so why can't we handle it? or why can't we drink the water when traveling, yet the locals can? and why do antibiotics slowly stop working? All this sterilizing is making us weaker.

Remember War of the Worlds? The aliens die from all the parasites on earth- we're completely wallowing in bacteria and parasites constantly. It's essential that we keep our bodies equipped to deal with them because we are never going to completely wipe them out. I suppose we could try to irradiate the planet, but that may prove problematic. The best idea is you give yourself a measured dose of something bad and your body will be ready to deal with an accidental dose later from nature. Its the same reason vaccinations work.

So go live in filth.

Food Supply

In the old days John raised cows, Joe grew wheat and Jennifer fished: individuals produced food and traded it.

Our supply of food has been whittled down to fewer and fewer sources. The grocery stores have amalgamated into 2-3 giant companies. Farms have been sewn together to form massive food machines. Even the struggling independant variety store owner is forced to get many of his supplies from costco and walmart. Naturally big companies are merging in many industries. Its an effective way to both eliminate the competition and create a larger, more capable, organization.

Food is now produced more efficiently, with the cost savings carried down to the shareholder.

The most obvious problem with this is the question of what happens when something goes wrong? Take a huge place like Maple Leaf. One production source has an outbreak of deadly virus, it affects a massive slice of the population. What choice have we got when ML is the only brand Blahblahs and such will carry? If John spit in the milk in the old days only a couple families may have been affected.

You've also got to wonder, in these days of credit crunch and greedy people essentially investing more money than there is available; what happens if one of the masters of our food supply up and collapses one day? It happens. Banks and insurance companies can bankrupt out from under people's feet, why not grocers? Let's suppose the next generation of Westons run blahblas into the ground and loose out to walmart and sobeys. Some poor investments that sink them fast, but they keep it a secret for the most part. One day they just announce: the ships going down, we're calling this company bankrupt. They escape to their yachts to sulk. Now again, if joe the farmer dies, well its tragic, but he's just one guy- its the kind of blip in the supply chain that we can easily overcome without problems. If we get all our food from 3 sources and one goes down, is the transition to 2 sources going to be seamless, do we want it to be?

The biggest worry though, is what happens if something big goes wrong. What if there is a major disaster that cripples our network of supplies. Which system do you think is better equipped? A merged food supply relies on central control to keep production and distribution happening. In the old days communities had most of what they needed to survive locally, today most communities don't even produce food- or they produce one kind but depend on (feed/seed) externally.

One day something bad will happen, its regrettably inevitable, meanwhile our eggs are being put into fewer and fewer baskets.

What can you do? Nothing, you have to eat. You will keep feeding these corporate beasts because you have no choice. Hey, by the time this all actually brings about the ruin of civilization we will probably be long gone, so really its a win win situation.

Leftovers

ok so i keep forgetting to post here too, heres the last few bloggerings i did over up on that there spacebook:

Friday, October 17, 2008

hey

so i also thought you should check out this party that ran in BC.

http://www.worklessparty.org

Basically, people in Europe don’t put up with this 45-60 workweek BS we have to put up with. A 32 hour workweek is common elsewhere. Less work means less stress, better families and less environmental destruction. The powers that be will try and tell you that we need to work more to maintain a competitive level of productivity. But lets be honest, many people are producing things that humanity doesn’t need in mass quantities. “Productivity” is only for the purposes of making the rich richer by keeping us poor busy.

Last night the woman working the till in Tim Hortons had a freak out. First she angrily threw stuff around complaining about her working conditions while making our order. By the end of it the poor woman was crying her eyes out (the line continued to form behind us). All the while there is a poster of well paid models in Tim’s uniforms above her stating “the job that fits your life”. Whenever there is a franchise based mass murder suicide the news asks: its a mystery how someone could be driven to this type of action. If the rich wern’t trying to constantly fuck us, and let us see our families more often, people would less frequently go crazy- its quite simple actually.

Friday, October 17, 2008

boot

All that buildup and i didn’t even post my opinion on the election outcome yet. Uh, ‘pointless’ says it best. Same government, only $200 million poorer.
Harper got greedy, thought he could win a majority. @ of the popular vote generally equals a majority in Canada, our electoral system sucks. My vote counted for jack shit since my mp didn’t win this riding (unfortunately this is the case for most Canadian voters).

A few highlights from Fairvote Canada:

The chief victims of the October 14 federal election were:

- Green Party: 940,000 voters supporting the Green Party sent no one to
Parliament, setting a new record for the most votes cast for any party that
gained no parliamentary representation. By comparison, 813,000
Conservative voters in Alberta alone were able to elect 27 MPs.

- Prairie Liberals and New Democrats: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives
received roughly twice the vote of the Liberals and NDP, but took seven times
as many seats.

- Urban Conservatives: Similar to the last election, a quarter-million
Conservative voters in Toronto elected no one and neither did Conservative
voters in Montreal.

- New Democrats: The NDP attracted 1.1 million more votes than the Bloc, but
the voting system gave the Bloc 50 seats, the NDP 37.

“How can anyone consider this democratic representation?” asked Barbara
Odenwald, President of Fair Vote Canada.

http://www.fairvote.ca

Thursday, October 09, 2008

Mac’s are useless

so i bought yet another new mp3 player. put 4 songs on it and listened to them while i did dishes. Today getting ready for work, i wanted to put more music on the player. Of course now the player is write protected, cannot be formatted (not sure if mac users know what that means) and no new files can be added or removed. All in the interest of protecting me from something i guess? When i drag them to the trash can, it makes a fucking copy of them into the trashcan. Why would that programming even exist? There is NO situation where you would want to copy files into the trash, this thing is completely stupid.

and the automated features are terrific, they now auto detect my monitor for me everytime i start the computer. Well, it detects it wrong, but at least this feature is working. I now have to attach the mac to my pc monitor, so that it redetects, change the display options and re-attach to the mac. It takes about 20 tries but eventually im back in business.

gotta love this system
i wish i was dead

Better get used to those 4 songs.

blog infects election

hey so myspace/CBC are featuring a link to my blog and I've been reading commenting on their forums and such. Look for the picture of a chicken for the link back to me. Its all happening here:


http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?
fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=281165659

Ok, thats it,

dont vote Harper!

gaddamn 'sleep'

Since i was a kid its been the same stupid thing with alarm clocks. Why do they bother with the sleep button, or why dont they at least hide it somewhere on the side or back of the clock. You go to set your alarm, time, snooze etc. . ... and you accidentally hit the sleep button and whammo, youre stuck with 59 minutes of radio that cannot be turned off. I had one radio, with a battery backup, you couldn't even unplug the thing to kill it. The only solution was to hold down the sleep button until the timer counted down to 1 min, then wait a minute, then the music would stop. If you held the button too long, it would cycle back to 59 minutes and if you accidentally tapped the button, it would count 1 hour 59 minutes.

So here's a question: If you are one of the very odd people who use this command, how do you deal with the volume problem? Surely if you've set your clock radio up for sleep mode at night, its at a volume and station that you are comfortable sleeping with- how can that same volume and radio station wake you up in the morning?

I hit sleep while trying to snooze this morning, so i unplugged the radio. After re-plugging it, i set the time and then alarm. As i set the alarm i accidentally hit sleep, which put up that happy 59 minutes again. So i whipped the whole apparatus into the hallway, terrifying the cat. I'm not getting up tomorrow.

Harper

Seen the ads where Harper goes on about playing cards with his kids and such? Motto- "Family is everything". I guess you're nothing in the eyes of the prime minister if you don't have a family.

A lot of people complain about mainstream politics and how only the very well connected can get the corporate help to actually run a campaign. I don't mind so much where the money comes from, but it really bothers me that %99 of the ads have nothing to do with politics and %0 mention anything specific (unless its an attack ad, then its specific and out of context).

I wonder if the leaders would be more reluctant to spend obscene amounts of money on television appearances if they were forced to say something politically meaningful in these appearances.

election details here:

The conservatives left me a flyer today, ive got to clean off the "no conservative flyers" sign. . . ..They've put 6 bullet points on the paper. first 2: 'Fair tax' and 'Safe streets'. Vague, but positive points i guess. 3) 'Respect for troops'- who the fuck doesn't do this already, honestly. I hate how the pro-war people in this country keep trying to label the rest of us as troop haters. I hate the conservative party, but ive got nothing against our troops you idiots.

4) 'Effective environmental protection'. Stage one, take us out of Kyoto (a globally accepted plan to reduce pollution). Stage two, a campaign of misinformation so that people would be confused about what a carbon tax is. . . . . . . .. "Carbon footprint", is that the one they use to record a newborn's foot size?

5) 'true voice for new Canadians'. Is true i guess, if you're rich and immigrated from a very white country.

The sixth one is my favourite by far, 6) 'Strong defense of our borders'. Thank god for that! If my village gets burned down in one more barbarian invasion im leaving this crummy country for good.


Or maybe its whales, are they worried whales will invade?

the sun was the only paper at the laudromat

There was an article today by Christie Blatchford where she said she didn't really understand what that whole "carbon footprint" business is about and made a quip to show that she doesn't really care about it either.

Not surprising from a baby boomer. I suppose if i were a member of the most environmentally destructive group of people that ever walked the earth i may want to hide my shame in ignorance as well.

help fight the spread of blog

hey there,
I've been bloggering on myspace for 6 months or so. Now ive got a system to post my complaints to several sites including this one. Check out this link if you want to see all of my entries and comments (shhh. ..most of the comments are fake).

http://www.myspace.com/remistevensandthegangofthieves
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Here's some of the highlights from this year so far:

Biofuels are Bullshit

I kind of hoped this was common knowledge, but i dont think it is yet so here goes. . .. It's pretty simple, mankind is already straining our farmland to grow enough food to feed everyone. People are still starving, food costs continue to rise. Mankind is also extremely dependent on fuel. Other than maybe air and water, i can't think of something humans consume more of than food and fuel. Filling cars with biofuels would basically group our two most demanded commodities onto one production source. Its preposterous.

So if we're already using all the land to grow food, where the hell are we going to grow all this corn needed for biofuel? There are billions of cars constantly sucking energy, we'd have to grow more biofuel crops than food crops. The news is already blaming ethanol for some of the recent food price increases, and we're only using about %5 in cars at best. As well, any farmer will tell you that corn is terrible for depleting the soil's growing ability. Easy right, we'll just triple our farmland and quadruple our dependency on fertilizers and chemicals- i suppose there's a whole lot more rainforest still to be had!

Its a diversion. Governments are powerless in the face of oil companies, so they pitch an incredibly lame alternative. The public believes the government is actually working on a brave new solution and the oil companies are happy because they're not stupid like the rest of us, they know biofuels pose no actual threat to their monopoly on energy.
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Rich People

When I'm not being several bands, i work long nightshifts in a busy rental place to make my many interest payments on my many debts. Night after night, the place is booked for lavish parties hosted by rich folks, im talking $250 000 lavish. Hundreds of people work to put these things on, planners, cleaners, security, cooks, waiters, technicians. ... Of course only the finest foods are served and fresh flowers and booze are plentiful.

How can the people who pay for these things live with themselves? I mean, we're suffering from global food and fuel shortages and these assholes have the audacity to blow unbelievable amounts of wasted resources and labour on some fucking party- an orgy of indulgence. And sometimes they'll call it a fundraiser, a Goddamn FUNDRAISER!

Imagine if all these skilled workers had been producing food for the poor instead, in fact, imagine all the people in the world who provide luxury to the rich were providing basic needs to the poor. Shortages solved, immediately, problem gone in the blink of an eye. --- but fuck no! Its more important that some rich prick can prove he's richer than last week's rich prick.

This is not a systemic problem, do not be mistaken. Don't blame it on the machine. Don't blame it on the people who service the rich either, what choice do I and others have? I'm so far in debt I have to do whatever will pay my bills and thats perfect. Those of us who can provide something the rich want, work like dogs, everyone else starves.

No, blame rich people.

And get angry. If they felt even the slightest moral obligation to their fellow man, they'd shoot themselves to feed thousands.
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don’t recycle

Myth1:
"Your wasteful, you're damaging the world, you need to re-structure your behavior to solve the problem"
Here's what the powers that be would like you to believe. In reality, our landfill space is overflowing because, and i've said this before, everything we buy comes in massive glossy packaging and is designed to break instantly. There are very few retailers left, we can only buy what's available. The people selling this shit need to re-think their behavior, not us.

Myth2:
"Recycling is good for the environment".
Common misconception, but recycling still uses a lot of energy. When we recycle, we 'reduce' the environmental impact of our waste, but that doesn't mean the end result is actually 'good' for the environment- its just less bad. Its like how they advertise hybrid cars as though they're trees or something; Its still a gas burning car!!!- i assure you it is not GOOD for the environment.

Myth3:
"Recycling will solve our landfill space problems".
The world is littered with dumps, if these dumps have no value, corporations will never touch them. If, on the other hand, our dumps are filled with a high quantity of metal, glass and decomposing organic matter spewing methane, corporations will eventually go back to them and try to reclaim some of these valuable resources. However, they would prefer we act as diligent recyclers, its much cheaper for them to process materials that have been cleaned and sorted; the public does all the work and the government pays for it- its a corporate dream come true. The public should be throwing everything into the dumps. As resources become more scarce, the value of these dumps will just keep going up, enticing companies to open them. Its like what happened with oil, they sucked all the easy sources of it out first, now they're forced to derive oil from more costly sources- sand/ocean. The more valuable materials are left in our dumps, the sooner cleaning them out will make sense for the corporate bottom line.

The corporate powers realized that through years of pushing consumerism, resources and landfill space were becoming scarce. They freaked out: 'oh shit, are we going to have to pay for this'. So they invented recycling, thereby downloading the cost of their actions onto the public. You wait, we'll end up paying for how they fucked up the air and the oceans as well- and they'll make us feel bad about it in the process.
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Universe not Finite

Well, there cant just be a wall out there at some great distance on the other side of which is nothing, cause hey, if its got an other side then that's something. So people like to theorize that if you traveled in one direction long enough you would eventually get back to where you started. Fine, but how the hell can you travel infinitely in one direction in a finite universe- one doesn't seem to fit into the other.
More importantly though is the fact that the universe is infinitely divisible- take 1/2 of any thing and you'll keep getting smaller and smaller things. To infinite divisions anything imaginable could exist in extreme smallness and extreme smallness within those extremes. Seen the end of MIB, orbs within orbs baby, to the max. Universe is not finite cause everything in it is infinite.
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Universe not Infinite

Easy, if the universe was infinite, anything conceivable that
could be concocted from the elements we know of would exist
somewhere. Since there is infinite space out there, there are
infinite possible chances for everything conceivable to exist.

It seems pretty conceivable that beings could exist from our
elements who were capable of long space travel and hell bent
on killing other species. If this is conceivable, and the
universe is infinite, then why hasn't such a super species
come and wiped us out already. Universe cannot be infinite.
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ok so you read to the end, what do ya want a medal. go check out the rest of it and my tunes.

http://www.myspace.com/remistevensandthegangofthieves

later dudes