It's Not the Fall. It's the Impact...

Okay, I've just spent the better part of an hour scanning and rescanning Canadian news sites for the story I saw on CBC around 10 PM tonight. I haven't found it yet. If anyone out there has better information than mine on the situation, by all means please let me know.

Now, pay close attention to the wording.

A TTC driver has been accused...

You know, I remember learning about law and the Canamerican justice systems in school. I clearly recall thinking about the differences between Canadian law and French law. At least when I was a lad - somewhere around the twilight years of the Cold War - the primary differences lay in the definitions of guilty and innocent. For us, it's innocent until proven guilty. The burden of evidence is on the prosecution. For the French, it is the opposite.

Being Canadian and believing deeply in my nation, an exercise in passion and frustration, I was struck by the French definitions. Imagine being accused of something and unless you can prove otherwise, it's the guillotine for you. (Yes-yes, 1977. But it's more exciting this way.) I've always found the idea that my accusers must provide evidence that I'm not being improperly judged a comfort. And that's the Canadian way, right?

Ah, but then again French influences run deep within our provinces and their waterways. Certainly this was demonstrated tonight when I saw a current picture, along with his full name and age, of a TTC driver accused of sexually assaulting a nine year old girl last Friday.

And what a horrible thing to do. I mean, seriously. An utterly despicable act which will leave a lifetime mark on another human being. It's the sort of thing which brings me to say that I believe in capital punishment, in spite of the controversy. But I am also saddened by the fact. Such unnecessary pain should not be a part of any life, yet here it is. I grieve first for the little girl and her family, and secondly for the man who has fallen so far from grace.

And likely stemming from a reaction to the anger and pain of such actions, our French traces rise to the fore, and a man who has yet to be proven guilty stands unofficially guilty until proven innocent, at least in the public mind. Why don't we just grab some rope? Really. Which ideals of law are we following?

Sadly, there are many instances of individuals being wrongly painted with this colour, only to be discovered innocent. But it's too late. We cannot take back what has been portrayed, and the primitive witch-hunting mindset has already been set in motion.

Just Keep Talking

David Suzuki is proof that you don't have to be right. You just have to keep saying the same things over and over again.

As a thirty-something individual, I remember occasionally watching The Nature of Things as a kid. (Obviously that was a long time ago.) And even then, at what was possibly the height of my love for sciences and the animal kingdom, I seldom enjoyed his program. Now that I'm a bit older, I think perhaps I understand why.

A couple of years ago I became curious about the lifespan of Compact Fluorescent Lights (CFLs). I primarily wondered because of manufacturing costs. It's quite simple. Take an ordinary incandescent bulb and look at its construction. Glass, a bit of metal, an inert gas, insulating material, a couple of other minor materials. Now look at a CFL. It's almost (kinda) the same thing, multiplied by three or four times the amounts. Plus, we have the addition of mercury - always used when Mr. Suzuki first began his crusade - a circuit board, and electronics.

Before I continue, yes, I know. We're trying to conserve electricity. But have you asked Why? Hmmm. "You think that's air you're breathing?"

The individuals attempting to sell you nuclear power as a good alternative (e.g., Mr. Short-Term Thinking himself, Dalton) have erroneously omitted one or two key details. First, nuclear is hideously, mind-bogglingly expensive. Especially when you have the likes of Hydro One and their Union Masters running the show.

Rabbit Trail:
If ever there was a crown corporation which should be cleaned out and rebuilt from the bottom up, it's Hydro One. I understand that they are deeply entrenched in society with multiple layers of "I'll scratch your back if...", but that doesn't absolve inexcusably pathetic resource management. (No privatisation, please. It's a cop-out of financial obligations. Isn't it, Mr. McGuinty?)

Back to costs. I've heard bits and pieces about restructuring nuclear as a means of employing laid-off workers and the like. From where? Well, let's see. Primary nuclear power in Ontario is based near .... General Motors. So, who's going to be employed, assuming they are "skilled"? Oh, that's right. Union workers with a deeply entrenched "The world owes me a fat paycheque because I breath its air" mentality. Certainly just coincidence, one of the many fascinating pieces to the puzzle.

And that brings us nicely to the burning question of population. Even with an issue this contentious, a valid question is raised. If the world's population - outside of Western Caucasians who have reached a sufficient level of comfort to stop having children - continues to rise and emigrate, we are facing an electricity shortage based on current lifestyle and infrastructure.

So, what's a government to do? The population has abdicated responsibility for anything not directly related to cheeseburgers and/or gossip. Plus, we can't resort to the only source of clean, fiscally-responsible electricity available, hydro-electric, because it requires rivers that three people have seen in the last 50 years, and this angers the environmentalists who aren't ever going to see the river. No, it's far safer, politically, to just keep the numbers, and the issue of where to hide nuclear waste, as quiet as possible while kissing babies, shaking hands, and promising to squeeze sunshine out of your ass.

Against this backdrop of complexity and our futile arguments, David Suzuki began to push hard for CFL usage, among other responsible, mis-researched behaviours. Incidentally, I'm not here to dispute his right to exist. The man has a cause and he's found a platform - just don't disagree with him. Besides, incandescent bulbs do waste the greater part of their supplied electricity: let's find a better alternative. But it's intriguing to me that he started to push when and how he did.

My internal questioning on the manufacturing process of CFL vs. Incandescent got to the point where I started researching. Lo and behold, I found an independent university study on the very matter. To make a long story short, the study concluded that in optimal circumstances, the lifespan of CFLs was long enough to overcome the greatly increased cost and resource-consumption. I.E. it's worth buying CFLs. But, what are optimal circumstances? At the time of this study, because improvements are ongoing, a CFL which was turned on and left on for less than 15 minutes at a time began to dramatically shorten its lifespan. So much so, that a CFL in a hallway or bathroom would barely outlast a general-use incandescent. That's not good, not good at all. Especially when we are constantly being reprimanded for leaving the lights on. But who's going to keep track of 15 minutes? It's easier to just say, "Turn the lights off," than it is to explain reality or balance. Perhaps balance would dictate using a mixture of old and new while developments continue, but that seems so disappointingly mundane in comparison to trumpeting a "prophetic" message of profound earth-saving.

Balance and using your brain are boring and difficult in comparison to vegging in front of The Nature of Things.

Yahoo! and Homeland Security

I am mainly just curious about this. When I click a Yahoo! link leading to a picture of a big fish (an Oarfish), and then click "show image" within the frame which Yahoo! provides to jump directly to the pic, why do I get to the Department of Homeland Security? And because a picture (or several) is worth a thousand words...

We start with this on March 11, 2010 at about 11PM.

Note my picture settings: Large and Wallpaper.

And you might as well just click on that third page.

Now click on the same image as the circled one.

Click view image at the top.

Voila!

Look at the articles. Now close your eyes and dream of freedom.

The circled one was my favourite, but the summary of the Greek Visa Waiver has the best chill factor. Just in case you don't see it, here's what it says.

Washington, D.C. - Secretary Napolitano announced the designation of Greece as a member of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP)—strengthening passenger information sharing and ensuring strict security standards while streamlining travel for Greek citizens visiting the United States.

Posted March 9, 2010 in News

Yeeeesss, "passenger information sharing....while streamlining travel"

"What's that you say, 'We are being told that less privacy leads to greater freedom.' Come on J. Lighten up and go party, dude."

Yes, Yahoo! is a major search engine trying to stay second place to Google. So this is almost certainly an innocent error. Still, it's worth noting that Yahoo! is one of several major U.S. information portals on the WWW, used by millions of people. If I were in the business of developing info-mining software algorithms, you can bet that Yahoo! would be of great interest to me.

And keeping in mind that Thomas Jefferson was a wealthy man who died penniless because he allowed people to take advantage of his generosity, I'll leave you with some of his thoughts.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.

Our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

- Thomas Jefferson

This Is a Rant

I make no apologies for what I'm about to write; just as newspapers right now are producing blatant material with no apologies. I call it manufacturing terror, and it sure does lead to manufacturing. Profit margins are looking pretty sweet right now for big pharmaceuticals and others indirectly involved in the sale of terror, as H1N1 ravages populations. "Hey! fat boy. Yeah, I'm talkin' to you," to quote Lucy Liu in Payback. And like the big sellers right now, I'm going to quote from real people who have done real studies, and I'm going to be vague about it because I want to sell my opinion.

As threats and dark warnings raged through the corridors of the WHO, periodically coming out as cautiously written newspaper headlines: H1N1 KILLS ANOTHER, a young lad in a town somewhere in Ontario quietly tabulated figures. He shook his head once and looked at the screen again. "So," he silently mouthed, "In three months Swine flu has killed as many people as the regular flu kills in five days..." Hence the headlines: AN other. An individual. Not, "Another Town Wiped Out".) But wait. It's a pandemic, right?

What does this word mean? According to dictionary.com's
Cultural definition, pandemic: "A widespread epidemic affecting a large part of the population."* Okay, that's pretty ominous, and vague. Kinda like, We're in an ideological battle to stop the spread of communism, 'cause the Russians and Chinese are trying to take over the world. Not, We're in an ideological battle because it keeps our economies rolling and our respective governments in power. Not quite fair, but then WHO said this was about playing fair? Let's see if Random House can narrow the definition down.

–adjective 1. (of a disease) prevalent throughout an entire country, continent, or the whole world; epidemic over a large area.
2. general; universal: pandemic fear of atomic war.
–noun 3. a pandemic disease.

Hmm. By the definitions the media are using, the common cold is also a pandemic, and so is the "average" flu strain. But in other years sane parents aren't plugging up ERs because their child has the sniffles. It seems that definition two is the one most purveyors of information are trying to get across. But before we entirely write off the risk, the word "pandemic" depends on another word.

Again, the Cultural definition. Epidemic: "A contagious disease that spreads rapidly and widely among the population in an area. Immunisation and quarantine are two of the methods used to control an epidemic."

Ah. Now it's starting to make sense. So that's why the pharmaceuticals rushed out a half-baked, improperly-tested vaccine with known, harmful ingredients. The alternative must be far worse. They do, of course, have historical precedent. In the past they've done the same thing, and the vaccine proved worse than the virus. Medical personnel have told me that the physical reactions to the early H1N1 vaccine are proving to be quite severe.**

I'm changing gears after reading this. Specifically this part:

We know, too, that this early, patchy picture can change very quickly. The virus writes the rules and this one, like all influenza viruses, can change the rules, without rhyme or reason, at any time.
Globally, we have good reason to believe that this pandemic, at least in its early days, will be of moderate severity. As we know from experience, severity can vary, depending on many factors, from one country to another.
On present evidence, the overwhelming majority of patients experience mild symptoms and make a rapid and full recovery, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.
Worldwide, the number of deaths is small. Each and every one of these deaths is tragic, and we have to brace ourselves to see more. However, we do not expect to see a sudden and dramatic jump in the number of severe or fatal infections.

Did you read that carefully? Pretty balanced, isn't it? And produced by the WHO, which up to this point I had thought was merely a tool in the hands of Big Pharmaceutical. And even if they are, the nature of that quote has been ignored by the major media outlets which I've seen.

Not that it changes the nature of this rant, but it certainly challenges my assumptions. What is a rant, anyway? It is a popularising argument based on a little information. I certainly find that the more information I possess, the less able I am to produce a savage rant. They are best written in the heat of the moment, passionate diatribes against some perceived threat, or more commonly, irritation. Although I try to keep mine from becoming too one-sided, it is impossible to do that by their very nature. You might as well tell an influenza virus to start healing people with pneumonia. (Note that satire is not the same thing as a rant.)

There's no excuse not to do your own research today. "A weekly edition of the New York Times contains more information than the average person was likely to come across in a lifetime in seventeenth-century England."*** While information overload is a well-documented issue, the real problem isn't the information. It's the lack of ability to filter that information. Besides, we all just want to get on with our lives, right? Who has time to sift through it all? I'm usually able to scan quickly and often find relevant research in a matter of minutes. But I know that's not everybody. Most of us don't have the time, so we settle for the media. And that's why we become helpless. It's all too easy to settle for a simplistic viewpoint when the reality is complex.

If I was to go by the calming headlines which every paper I've seen is printing, I would freak. But then I come across factual information.

What?
A new opinion emerging?
Relevant details which are anything but panic inducing?
Impossible.

So who is benefitting from the spread of manufactured fear? The answer is patently obvious. We don't have to be conspiracy theorist to check financial reports or see if we even have a pulse.


You can find additional info and sources on influenza here and here (among others). While we don't have the time or inclination to carefully study everything which comes across our path in life, we should pay attention to those things which shape our thinking. Depending on your reading and absorbing skill, 15-20 minutes of your day may open your eyes. At least check the "2009 flu pandemic" entry and read the opening. Also read the opening of section 7. "Vaccination and prevention", all of section 7.4 Facial masks, and all of 8. "Treatment".

Fear caused by ignorance has got to be the most dangerous, mob-inducing thing. I personally believe that it's responsible for more stupidity and tragedy in world history than anything else. I do not have kind thoughts for the population willing to put itself in chains over such fear when so much information is freely available.

(Yes, yes. You hate wikipedia because "anyone" can edit it. It's remarkably quality-controlled today and is often an excellent source of further research. Besides which, what makes the editors of magazines and newspapers paragons of wisdom and insight? Their primary goal is to sell, right? We all need to continuously develop the ability to filter information.)

* The American Heritage® New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition (Used from dictionary.com.)
** I will work at getting the exact specifics for you. In the meantime, do yourself the obvious favour.
*** Wurman, Richard Saul. Information Anxiety. New York & Toronto: Doubleday, 1989.

I just did my part to help Big Brother.

In today's vernacular, Luddite has come to mean a person who doesn't like technology. Or perhaps better spoken, a person who avoids it. Funny, that. Even the dictionary has come to present historical fact that way, stating the "Luddites" were groups of people who rioted because they believed automated machinery would deprive them of work.

But Luddites were more than that. They were individuals who saw the end of a way of life, but more importantly, they saw the way it was going to end.

Today I filled in an online Chapters bookstore psychotic, errr, psychiatric profile. It is collected by Gallup, a third-party, for privacy reasons. At the end of many circular, one-line, linear questions, a page popped up telling me that my information had been collected properly, and someone would be in touch if I fit the profile: the Chapters/Indigo/Smith/Cole's profile of a good employee. (And all this for slightly over minimum wage. That speaks volumes in itself.) While such questions do build a profile, they also ignore the fact that life is infinitely more complex than a psychiatric profile alone can convey. Take one of the early questions. (And I have to paraphrase because I didn't think to save it at the time.)

You are watching a five year old hammering. He hits his finger and starts crying. Do you:
A. Try to get him to laugh to take his mind off the pain.
B. Teach him how to hammer properly.
C. Check his finger to see if it's badly hurt.
D. Comfort him.

All valid choices. I chose B. At the end of the day, that's ultimately what I would hope to do in that situation. But first I would comfort him while taking a look at his finger. Then I would tell him a funny story about my own hammerings to get him to laugh. And finally, I would teach him how to hammer properly.

"But," you say, "They know this already. They're just checking to see what you consider most important. It's allows them to see further into your personality."

Yes, it does, but what really? I just laid out for you what any responsible, experienced person would do in that situation. How do you know that I'm responsible and experienced? Will my profile tell you that? Yeah, and I've got an online dating site waiting to hook you up. You can build a profile and take an educated guess. But it's still an online profile without a face, without the human spirit. The essence of a person - and therefore their teachability, their complexity - cannot be understood or grasped from a summary of their surface traits.

And since we're talking about me, I'll outline a specific example. As you know, communication is primarily through body language. While an online profile is fully capable of telling you what my tendencies are, it is unable to capture body language. The nervous tics we've developed in life, the impact of a facial expression, your opening smile. It's my smile that most people comment on first, but perhaps not ironically, I tend to be a cynic. Not always happy-go-lucky. Not the constant life of the party. I take a rather dim view of human nature. Yet, I still smile. And often enough that I get consistent comments on it.

It's funny. Even while I write this, I'm struggling inside. One half of me is arguing for the above, and the other side is saying, "But logically, J, they're just using this as a tool to weed out the deadbeats. What's so wrong about that? And besides, these personality profiles are remarkably accurate." And I have to answer myself, "Exactly." What is so wrong about this? Why should it upset me at all? And there you see it. A culture being programmed by another culture. We are so attuned to our progress that we have created a self-perpetuating giant. Self-perpetuating, because 99% of us just "get on with the program". Not only that, but we usually ignore or ridicule those who don't.

And now we return to the Luddites. The Weaver's Guild believed that factories didn't consider people anymore. The focus was no longer about what a human could accomplish, but what a human could enable a machine to accomplish. And as that idea progressed, they could see that a human would become less and less creative, more and more a droid. Economics aside, that was the heart and soul of their "riots". Which, by the way, were crushed.

Ever heard one of those songs?

This is one sick music video and song. I heard it on a soundtrack, and I said to myself,

"That has a Björk-like ring to it. I like it. I must have it."

So I start searching online, but my friend beats me to finding who it is. Lo and behold, the singer is not Icelandic, but she is Nordic, which is close enough. Something about those high-northern hemisphere Caucasians and their Indy musicians. They've got a common thread.

It turns out that the "singer" in the music vid is one Marianne Schröder, model. (Apparently, those eyes are real.) The singer is Karin Dreijer Andersson, half Goth, half recluse, kinda freaky, killer voice.

Have I mentioned how much I enjoy killer voices and stellar, mysterious lyrics? Most of the best people were born in '75-'77.

Well, the song is by Röyksopp, and I don't particularly like what I've heard of the rest of their music. Guess I'm more into so-called trip-hop and hyphens than what they normally serve. But, let me get out of the way. Listen, and if it's your thing, enjoy.