davidbelliveau

Nearly 2 months as a Vegan

2012-01-04T00:58:00.000-04:00

Long time since I posted anything here.

I made a big change in how I eat.

I watched the Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead movie in September, but couldn't justify dumping $400 on a good juicer and the added $15/day in food that would be needed to keep up that program.

Then I saw Forks Over Knives on November 4th and figured I could do that. So I didn't eat any more animal products starting November 5th and don't really feel that I miss anything.

What really makes sure I won't go back to eating animal products was my recent viewing of Earthlings. I can't believe I ignored how most of the food I ate came to be on my plate. It's disgusting seeing seeing what people will do to turn animals into food, clothing, etc.

If you really have the guts to look at what goes into the planet's use of animals for food, I suggest you give Earthlings a watch. It's on Youtube. I don't think you'll look at a Quarter Pounder the same way, ever again. Or a pair of leather shoes. Or a fish stick.

June Bugs In May

2010-05-25T00:25:00.001-03:00

The June Bugs arrived in Gaytons, Memramcook, NB on the evening of the 24th of May. I have no idea what day the Mayflies showed up.

Lost

2010-05-24T09:44:00.002-03:00

I watched the first few minutes of the pilot episode of Lost. That's it. It didn't really look like something I wanted to see.

If I ever get sick and stuck in bed for a few weeks, I'll probably download the whole thing and watch it then.

Ass Backwards

2010-03-15T23:01:00.003-03:00

I somehow got sidetracked while looking for information on a topic and ended up on the Wikipedia page for the Ford Model T.

What's amazing is that this car was first sold for a price of $850 in 1909. By 1913, only four years later, the price actually dropped to $550. In 1915 it dropped to $440. By the time the 1920s rolled around, you could buy a Model T for $290.

Why can't a North American automaker do that again today? Design a basic vehicle. One that doesn't have any frills. Then make the same car, year after year, getting better at making the car and making it cost less. Heck, there's really no reason to get too fancy.

The only innovation really needed would be to ensure that it's a flex fuel vehicle. Something that can run on ethanol or methanol, just in case these fuels make a big splash in our motoring world. No radio, no air conditioning, no heated seats, no dvd player or GPS navigation....just plain old basic transportation. If people want all the extras, they can buy them and bolt them on later.

Sure, all the automotive press would bash such an initiative, but countering that crap with a big "Shut The Hell Up" campaign might just work.

Gimme a basic, bare bones car and a basic, bare bones pickup that keeps getting cheaper to buy every year for the next 2 decades.

9 a.m. and 4.6 degreees

2010-03-06T08:58:00.001-04:00

I think it's gonna be a warm one today. Bright sunshine for the first time in many, many days.

Which means I might have to break out the clippers, since I told my nephew that he has to wait till it's 12 degrees before I give him a buzz cut.

Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should

2010-03-01T10:29:00.003-04:00

When I was a kid, I had this yard stick that I got from the county fair. With that yard stick, I could finally reach up and hit the ceiling in my bedroom. The dropped ceiling was made of insulated panels, the kind you find in offices all over the place. It's very fragile, but does the job nicely when it just hangs there. I was about 6 or 7 yrs old and without thinking, I used that yard stick to poke holes all over that dropped ceiling. I obviously wasn't thinking clearly at the time and was more impressed with this new found capability to finally reach the height of the ceiling than I was concerned with the damage I'd do by whacking it with this fancy reach extender. It's one of my first memories of learning that "Just Because I Can, Doesn't Mean I Should".

When I was in my 20s, I could chug a mug of beer in about 3 seconds. I figured out that I could just let the beer pour down into my gut instead of going through the motions of making the muscles meant for swallowing do the job for me. This is one of those examples of a skill being acquired that probably shouldn't be practiced. Just because I could, doesn't mean I should.

Or, how about being in a nice, sporty car and tearing down the highway at 200 km/h? The car's perfectly capable of reaching those speeds, the road is wide and clear enough...but really, just because I can, doesn't mean I should. There are other people on the road, a moose could stumble out of the woods...the chance, however small, that I could wreck the car and injure others and myself is the reason I don't go tearing around the province at 200 km/h.

There's a now commonly used technology that's being used that fits the description of "Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should. It's the electro-shock weapon known as the TASER. With it, you can incapacitate an opponent by discharging an electric current to a person's body, which short circuits the victim's nervous system. The short circuiting of the nervous system causes involuntary muscle contractions. While this is happening, the victim can't choose how their body moves, they can't run away, they can't throw a punch, they can't kick, they can't stand up.

Ordinarily, this would seem to be a great tool for incapacitating a belligerent foe. Poof, you pull a trigger and turn a problem into a nice package waiting for confinement. It would seem to be an ideal means of eliminating a significant amount of risk to any law enforcement official.

Of course, what you're doing is electrocuting a person. Remember those old movies where they have a person tied to a chair, and electrodes are placed on various parts of the body by an evil villain? The villain then hits a switch and the prisoner shakes, rattles and rolls in pain. The idea is to torture the victim in order to get them to comply with the villain's orders.

Now our law enforcement officers routinely torture suspects. They arrive on the scene and find someone who is currently unwilling to be detained and the first instinct is to torture the victim by electrocution in order to get them to comply. It's easier, quicker, and very effective. Like cattle being led to slaughter, the use of torture by electrocution makes it significantly easier to change someone's mind from that of being opposed to a situation to doing whatever the law enforcement officer requests.

Are you making the mistake of sitting in the good seats when you've only paid for a cheap seat at a baseball game? You will either calm down or suffer the torture of electrocution.

Did you ask a VIP an embarrassing question? Shut up or you'll be tortured by electrocution.

Did you go 50 mph in a 45 mph zone? You're in for a torturously shocking experience.

Sometimes you can be tortured by electrocution for apparently passing a sobriety test. This is a good one to watch, since there's a guy, flat on his face on the ground, hands behind his back. There are half a dozen police officers there as well, but one of the police officers has this nifty little electrical torture tool that he just can't resist using on a suspect that doesn't appear to be trying to fight, run away, or otherwise prevent his being taken into custody.

Everyone knows what a pain in the neck a 14 yr old girl can be. What's the best way to get them to pay attention? Shoot a taser at her head, have the taser dart penetrate their skull and require hospitalization and 14 vicious looking staples to put Humpty back together again.

Some police officers seem to have a lack of confidence with the ability to detain the elderly. This 74 yr old great grandmother was obviously too much of a physical match for the officer that pulled her over for speeding in a construction zone. What other choice did he have than to torture her by electrocution?

Make sure you don't fall off a bridge and break your back. You might get tased 19 times.

I think this particular video shows that some police discriminate against people who are a little slow to produce their license and proof of insurance. Punishment....torture by electrocution.

There's one nasty side effect of torture by electrocution. It doesn't happen all the time, but it appears to be statistically significant enough to warrant serious concern. People are dying due to their interactions with tasers.

A man who landed at an international airport in Vancouver apparently was "misplaced". Since he spoke no English, and no one spoke Polish, he couldn't find out where he was supposed to go after landing. After 9 hours of confusion, the guy started getting a little bit upset. The police were called. Half a dozen officers decided that they didn't have the physical capability to take the man into custody, so they used the torturous electrocution device on him repeatedly. As a result of the tortuous electrocution, Mr. Dzeikanski died on the spot.

I could link to dozens of other taser induced death videos. However, dying from taser use isn't really the point. The point is that cruel and unusual punishment is something that folks in the States are constitutionally protected against. Most other countries also have laws that protect their citizens from cruel and unusual punishment. Torture is cruel and unusual punishment. Using a taser on a person is torture by electrocution.

It's that plain and simple. Just because you can make a device that can be used to inflict torturous electrocution on someone doesn't mean you should. And just because they're available, doesn't mean that the police forces have to buy them. And just because an officer has one on their belt doesn't mean that it needs to get used.

Just because you can, doesn't always mean you should.

Enviropig?

2010-02-26T20:17:00.002-04:00

Now I don't know much about handling farm waste. I'm just looking at this from another angle, the problem of peak phosphorous.

The folks at the University of Guelph seem to have engineered a genetic strain of pigs that absorb phosphorous instead of peeing it out into the waste stream. It's done by a modification to the gene that controls the salivary gland. With the modification, the salivary glands of Enviropig will secrete phytase. The Phytase will make the consumed phosphorous digestible, which means it will end up in the meat and bones instead of the pee.

It seems to me that the problem isn't with the contents of the pig pee, but with the quantity of the pig pee. Instead of the phosphorous ending up in a place that can control, extract and possibly reuse the phosphorous as a much in demand fertilizer, the Enviropig will simply push the problem of phosphorous recover down the road a bit to the butcher and the consumer. Once the element makes it that far away from the farm, it will be much more difficult to recover and put to better use.

From my chair, it looks like the wrong problem is being solved.

8 degrees C today on Cypress

2010-02-18T09:26:00.002-04:00

It's supposed to be 8 degrees C on Cypress Mountain, the location of many Vancouver Olympic sporting events.

Isn't that a little warm for snow?

Cold Turkey - I Gotta Stop

2010-02-06T10:58:00.003-04:00

I just noticed that I became an addict again.

Every week, it seems I just had to know whether or not Jack Bauer was able to get himself out of another sticky situation with CTU. I mean, jeebus, does it really matter to me if Chloe helps Jack find himself out of another sticky situation with terrorists?

And what about those crazy kids at Seattle Grace? Cristina burns her ass on a vent grate, Lexi cries on an elevator and the Chief is an alky.....like that has anything to do with me.

Never mind the secret love affair between Rigsby and Van Pelt. Will Patrick Jane ever find the folks who killed his family? I don't think it should matter to me any more.

Will Charlie's brother find a god he can agree with while fighting off the bad guys at the FBI? Will Amita finally agree on a wedding date? I don't think I should bother waiting around to find out.

Sara, Ray, Catherine and Greg will probably find out whodunit without me glued to the screen.

I just can't wait around to find out if Emily Lightman will turn out to be a stripper or an astrophysicist. Cal will probably drive her insane with his magical lie detector eyes, so no good will come of it in the end anyway.

I'm sure if I wait around long enough, Penelope will finally get knocked up and have to leave the Behavioural Analysis Group. Hotch and Dr. Reid will find OJ's knife stuck in the ground at Johnny Cochrane's tombstone. And none of it will affect me one bit.

Nathan Ford's alcoholism will have to progress without me watching. If he sobered up, Sophie's return would probably end up with the both of them in a Brazilian prison anyway. Hardison and Parker might find they've met their match while going undercover at a Tea Party Convention...but even if they don't, I shouldn't be wasting brain waves thinking about it.

Eventually, Manny's gonna make his step father Jay angry when he kidnaps a sophomore and keeps her in the attic, feeding her traditional Columbian fare while wearing a bullfighter's outfit in the attempt to convince the poor girl that her life would be forever wonderful if she devoted herself to a lumpy little passionate psychotic 11 year old. Yes, it will probably be hilarious. Yes, it will all turn out good in the end....for sure by the end of the 22 minutes of an episode that will surely involve a big fat gay guy making a straight guy uncomfortable. I'm pretty sure Phil won't mind if I stop watching. Even if he actually knew I was watching, his character wouldn't notice if I stopped.

Charlie, Jake, Alan, Rose, Berta, Judith, Herb and Evelyn crack me up. There's not a week that they're on that I don't laugh out loud at the show. This is one that's gonna be hard to give up....especially now that Chelsea might be leaving him for a charity operating lawyer. However, just the fact that I can run off these fictional character names off the top of my head shows that I should probably stop watching no matter how funny the show is.

It disturbs me a bit, looking back on it, that I spent about 1/2 an hour of my life trying to figure out who Jules Cobb's son Travis looked like. By the way, it was Oliver Platt. I think this is the show that is pushing my awareness of TV addiction into my consciousness. It's a really dumb show...it's not really that clever. It's hardly ever funny. But for some reason, I found myself watching every episode.

I'm just glad that Lost or Heroes never got under my skin. I can't even find myself that interested in the 2 dozen spin-offs of CSI Las Vegas. I never spent a minute with the NCIS people, the Bones shows, or Desperate Housewives. I somehow weaned myself off of all those Law & Order shows...I think it's because I never knew which one I was watching.

The thing is, those shows that I watch religiously represent 9 1/2 hours a week. Even in the off season, I manage to get in many hours watching True Blood, Californication, East Bound & Down, or whatever other off season fare was available. The Sopranos gave me back an hour a week when they finally decided to call it quits.

But, now is the time to stop watching all of them. Imagine if I had spent that 9 1/2 hours a week walking my dog? I'd be 180 lbs by now...and my dog wouldn't look like an overstuffed bratwurst. What if I spent 1/2 that time practicing playing the ukulele? Or even if I took one of those hours and extended my nightly sleep from 6 hours to 7? That would be nice.

9 1/2 hours a week being entertained by recurring fictional characters has to stop. I congratulate the folks that put this stuff together....it really is magnetic stuff. But enough is enough.

So, here it is. See ya later 24. See ya later Grey's Anatomy. Bye bye for now to the Mentalist, Numb3rs, Lie to Me, CSI, Criminal Minds, Leverage, Modern Family, Cougar Town and Two and One Half Men. You now have to adjust your viewer count down by one...I think I have better things to do.

Put away a couple of bucks for an accountant

2010-01-28T21:57:00.005-04:00

I just saw on Huff Post that Howard Zinn had passed away at the age of 87. A few months ago, I didn't really know who he was, or perhaps I learned of him years ago and just forgot about it.

I started reading A People's History of the United States about a month ago. I'm still reading it every now and then...no hurry...I'll finish it sometime soon. The man knows how to tell a story.

Reading the Harvey Wasserman story on Mr. Zinn's life of activism reminded me of when I was in Vancouver in late 2002, early 2003.

It's been quite a while, but when I lived in Vancouver in late 2002 to early 2003, I remember participating in 2 marches against the bush push towards war in Iraq. I can't remember which one had the bigger crowd, either the first or the second. But I do remember the one with the larger crowd was a pretty big gathering.

We started out at Canada Place and marched west till we hit West Georgia, then we followed West Georgia until we stopped at the Vancouver Art Gallery. The streets were packed with activists. I was near the back of the pack and by the time we got started, there were already people passing by us, in the other direction heading to the gallery a few streets over. We were wall to wall people, pretty solidly packed for about 2.5 kilometers. Since the streets are 20 meters wide, this means that there's about 50,000 square meters of marching space. Even if we spaced each other out to be standing 2 meters away from the next person, this would represent 12,500 people. I think there were more. We were packed in a little closer than 6 feet away from each other.

The news reports from that afternoon stated that the Vancouver police estimated the crowd to be between 2,500 and 3,000 protesters. When I finally got close to the art gallery, there just wasn't any room. There were easily 8,000 people packed in that area, in front of the gallery, in the street, poured into the side streets.

The protest didn't manage to stop the war, but I think it did convince Prime Minister Chretien that participating was against the will of the people. Perhaps the Vancouver police can't count, but the PMO's office sure seemed to have that ability.

As the headline for this post states, it's probably a good idea to put away a couple of bucks for an accountant and have them attend protests and get a good count of the people that are there. The protest organizers might have claimed 50,000....the police 3,000...but the truth was somewhere in the middle...my guess of about 15,000.

Exact numbers might not really matter, but then again...maybe they do. If you're a well attended protest and the media and police want to downplay the effect of that protest, perhaps a 3rd party count might be good for public opinion....so put away a couple of bucks for your next protest and pay someone to get the count right.

Artificial Jail for Artificial People

2010-01-23T09:44:00.006-04:00

This article is in response to, and in support of the Special Comment by Keith Olbermann

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Way back in 1819, the US evolved a strange creature into existence. Instead of the creature being born of a mother and father, this creature came into being by the drafting of papers and registration with the state.

This creature obtained the rights of human beings. It obtained the rights of free speech, it obtained the rights of existence. These creatures also had some responsibilities, but not all the responsibilities with which humans were burdened.

These creatures became bodies, or what in Latin is known as corpus. The act of creating this body is known in Latin as corporare. From those Latin roots, these new beings are now known as Corporations.

There has been a long struggle with the beings known as Corporations. They are legally to be accepted as Human beings, but they somehow exist without all the responsibilities of human beings. As a way to maintain some control over these beings, many laws have been created to attempt to rein in the potential power of the Corporation. One that was recently turned over in the Supreme Court of the US is the right for a Corporation to be seen as a human being where the restrictions on financing political campaigns is concerned.

For a while, corporations were restricted to the level that they could finance political campaigns. Since the corporations weren't allowed to vote in elections, it only seemed fair that corporations shouldn't be allowed to fund political campaigns.

Then, some silly civil rights expert fought for the rights of these corporations, as if they were equivalent to human beings. The next thing you know, someone's going to fight for the right of corporations to vote in elections.

As the title of this post declares, it may be time to start treating corporations more like people. Since these bodies have the right to free speech, they should also have the responsibility to suffer incarceration when their actions are deemed illegal.

Let's look at a relatively recent crime that a corporation committed. This one wasn't chosen for any reason other than it was one of the first that showed up during a Google search for "overcharged their customers".

In Chemical & Engineering News, there's a story which states that a study showed that Union Pacific, CSX, Norfolk Southern, Kansas City Southern, and Burlington Northern Santa Fe committed fraud against their customers to the tune of $6.4 billion.

This group of companies added $12.1 billion in surcharges to their customers to cover increases in fuel costs. The problem is, their fuel costs only increased $5.3 billion. This discrepancy is much too large to be considered a simple accounting error. It clearly reflects intent to commit fraud. And since the practice seems to have been some form of collusion between these companies, it might also have some anti-trust implications as well. But let's just focus on the $6.4 Billion theft.

Here's another story that wasn't chosen for any other reason than it's high placement in a Google search for the terms Fraud, Guilty, Sentenced. A man was found guilty of one count of bank fraud for bouncing checks and offering fake lines of credit to others. His crimes were far less than $6.4 billion, but serious nonetheless. His prison term is 5 years. He'll be incarcerated, not be allowed to vote, not allowed to run a business, not allowed to have all the normal rights that a non-convict has.

Although I didn't look into what eventually happened to all those big railroad companies, if they were indeed found guilty of fraudulently overcharging their customers by $6.4 billion, it is certain that these companies will not receive one day of jail time. They'll probably only pay fines, have to return $$ to their customers, but it is sure that they will not go out of business.

And that's the problem. There isn't fairness under the law for these creatures we call corporations. They don't go to jail when they commit crimes. They can draft corporate policy that defrauds their customers of billions of dollars, but they can't go to jail because there's no jail for them to go to.

This is the reason why we have such lousy corporations. When they break the law, they don't really suffer. They get fines, they get sued, but often times they just keep on chugging away as if nothing happened. There's no real, strong, solid deterrent.

If the railroad companies mentioned above had the threat of corporate prison sentences for fraud hanging over their heads, their corporate policies might be drafted a little more carefully. Knowing that the corporation might go to prison and not be allowed to function as a corporation for 5 years would change the way corporations do business.

Imagine, as a shareholder, how you would feel if the management of the corporation that you had shares in were putting the functionality of that corporation in danger by acting in a manner that risked the corporation going to jail for 5 years. Then shareholders would be much more careful when choosing the board of directors, choosing the management team, etc. Who would want to invest in a corporation that could actually suffer prison sentences for acting criminally?

The result would be that we'd have better corporations. These corporations would think differently.

It seems like an over simplification, and it just may be. That's the risk of blog posts. There's not enough room to put all the details in one place. I am not a lawyer. But it seems like common sense that if a guy can get 5 years in prison for bank fraud, it would only be fair that railroad companies that fraudulently stole $6.4 billion from their customers should be prevented from being in business for at least 5 years.

There are all sorts of crimes where corporations and humans are treated differently. A human can get 10 years for negligent homicide. A corporation that provides food to people, but doesn't take due care to ensure that the food is safe, and consequently has its customers die of food poisoning is also guilty of negligent homicide, but the corporation doesn't see a day in jail.

The punishments must fit the crimes. And the punishments should be applied evenly amongst all creatures...human beings and their artificial, yet relative equivalents, corporations. Jail for one means jail for all.

Sneaky Jerks

2010-01-20T20:26:00.002-04:00

You know what sucks? Being in a store...reading the label....not knowing what the heck they're calling things now.

Here in Canada, they've decided to call the poisonous swill formerly known as High Fructose Corn Syrup something less familiar. Glucose/Fructose.

The stuff's full of mercury, it needs a genetically modified enzyme for its production, and it's been shown to screw up your system much faster than plain sugar.

Instead of getting rid of the stuff, they change the name. HFCS became scary, now they'll call it glucose-fructose. When people catch on to that, they'll call it isoglucose. When that pseudonym no longer works, the grand finale name will most likely be Maize Syrup.

No matter what, I don't like it. The smart soft drink company will be the one that makes soft drinks the old fashioned way....with sugar. I read somewhere that there's a new drink coming on the market...Coca Colla. Not the one you know about, but an old fashioned recipe being brought back by Evo Morales in Bolivia. Good old fashioned coca and kola flavoring in a bubbly sugar based drink. What's more natural than that?

Opensolaris...maybe later.

2010-01-17T09:33:00.003-04:00

I tried to load Opensolaris on my cheapo Acer box to give it another try. The thing is, I don't have a hard wired internet connection. I'm using a Brand X USB wireless thingy. Yes, there are ways of making it work. They have to do with using the windows drivers, gcc, and other goodies.

It's too much of a pita though. The CD of Opensolaris doesn't have gcc. I started to look for how to download the other packages needed to get the USB wireless going and gave up. I'm sure there's a way, but I think I have better ways to use my Sunday...and my Acer machine.

The other option would have been to drag the computer and monitor down to the room that has the wireless router and hook everything up there, but I don't think I'll bother.

It's too bad that I can't just drill another hole through the floor and wall...I'm only about 8 feet away from the room that has the router, but about 60 feet if I had to string an ethernet cable without drilling holes. My longest ethernet cable is only 50 feet, so that's out too.

I'm hoping that some $$ will fall out of the sky sometime soon so I can just buy all the goodies I need to do this in another way. Those Sun Ultra 27 Workstations look pretty sweet.

I can't figure out why there isn't an easy tool like the one Linux Mint uses to use windows drivers to make wireless USB sticks work. I'll check it out in a couple of weeks to see what they've got. I understand that a new OpenSolaris is due in Feb or March.

Opensolaris

2010-01-16T13:44:00.002-04:00

I'm gonna give Open Solaris another try. I don't remember which version I used last time...I think it was 2008.5 or something like that. I seem to remember not being able to find a good Miro package...which is kind of a dumb reason for dumping a perfectly good, slick, quick OS. But Miro's the only thing that gives me Countdown and the Rachel Maddow show.

I didn't have a KVM at the time either, so if there are things missing on the OpenSolaris box, I'm sure I'll be just one push of a button away from finding them on the Linux Mint 8 box.

One thing that would be great is if Open Solaris would be able to read my apparently broken My_Book drive. There's 260 gigs of stuff there that I kept for some reason. I think the drive's still good...it's just the USB enclosure junk that doesn't seem to work well.

NB Power Buyer?

2010-01-15T17:12:00.002-04:00

Here's a prediction.

Hydro Quebec will not be the owner of NB Power. Suez will make a different/better(?) offer.

I'd give it 1 chance out of 9.

Copenhagen Fail

2010-01-15T00:29:00.006-04:00

I just finished watching Jonathan Pershing, the US deputy envoy for climate change, address some people at the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Listening to the man makes it clear that he's a negotiator. I don't know him. I don't know what his body of work is. I don't know if he has actual, real, solid solutions to addressing the threat of climate change. I only know what I've read and heard from a small portion of his activities over the past month where it pertained to his participation at Copenhagen and the 22 minute video noted above. My opinion in this matter is purely conjecture.

That said, it looks like the US was very unprepared and very much unable to provide leadership in addressing climate change. In an event where the US should have participated as an equal participant, the negotiators and their "bosses" instead decided to forgo any semblance of humility and instead bully their way through the proceedings.

It doesn't seem that Mr. Pershing and his bosses don't want to address the climate change threats. It's just that they're unwilling to admit that they don't have the capacity to do so.

The truth of the matter is that the others in the rest of the world are in the lead, both in experience and in technology. If you want to learn how to do wind power, contact the Germans and Danes. If you want to know how to do geothermal, contact the folks from Iceland. If you want to know how to do ethanol, contact folks from Brazil.

Instead, Mr. Pershing blamed the failure in Copenhagen on the ALBA nations of Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.

The reality is, there would be no need for a Climate Change Summit of any kind if the US wasn't such a large emitter.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the emissions of the countries that Jonathan Pershing blames for throwing Copenhagen off the rails:

Tonnes of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Per Capita
Bolivia (2006)____________________1.2
Venezuela (2006)_________________6.3
Cuba (2006)______________________2.6
Nicaragua (2006)________________0.8
Average _________________________2.725

United States (2007)_____________19.1

700% more on average than the ALBA countries.

These are Per Capita numbers. Per Capita is the measurement on the effects from culture and attitude. If the people of the United States had the same culture and attitude as those of the ALBA nations, the whole world would not be facing climate change disaster.

It is clear by these numbers that to blame these four countries for the failure of Copenhagen is a severe practice of deception...a negotiator's failed sleight of hand attempt.

When a criminal in prison has a chance to reduce their prison sentence, they do so by appearing before the parole board. In order to reduce their sentence, one of the conditions is that they admit their guilt. Another condition is that they express remorse for committing the crime. Failure to do these two things will prevent the reduction of their sentence...they'll stay in jail. The only chance for moving forward and participating in the community as a free person requires admission of guilt and remorse for the crime.

From what I can see, and what appears to be experienced by the rest of the world, the US is not admitting guilt nor expressing remorse for their contributions of atmospheric carbon.

The crime is measurable. The recognition that the US has impacted and damaged far more atmospheric space than could be justifiably alloted to any country is clear. I'm sure if they were able to admit to committing this crime, the potential for cooperation by all the other countries of the world to move forward to seriously addressing the climate change threat would be much greater.

Instead, they've chosen to have Jonathan Pershing point fingers at Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua...four countries that contributed less than 15% per capita what the citizens of the US contribute to the Carbon Crisis.

Hopefully April 2010's Climate Change Summit in Cochabamba will provide another chance to get a better agreement. Maybe Jonathan Pershing can show up and apologize for his distracting remarks....it's never too late to show remorse.

Where is my memory?

2010-01-10T17:24:00.002-04:00

I just installed Anki, a flash card educational tool. I'm trying to use it to learn Spanish. I set it up to learn 40 words/phrases a day and I just can't seem to remember something I learned 2 minutes ago.

I guess there's too much plaque in the brain or something. I'll keep hammering away at it though, as it seems that if I can re-wire my brain to learn to learn/remember, that might be a good thing in the long run.

Either that or all those Budweisers consumed in the 80s are coming back to haunt me.

NB Power....Good Job

2010-01-03T13:03:00.002-04:00

Lights went out last night around 11 p.m. We saw a big flash out the window, then darkness...well, except for my computer which has a nice APC UPS....I was able to safely shut things down without trashing all my disks.

Of course, winds around here were blowing from the east at over 100 km/h, so that's to be expected. What's amazing is that I can't remember the last time that the power went out around here. The transmission & distribution that the folks at NB Power have put up over the years would probably rank right up with the top 5% of transmission & distribution grids worldwide.

We hooked up the backup generator this morning for coffee and to run the fan on the wood furnace.

Lights came back at around 1 p.m., everything seems to be working just fine now.

As far as the weather....well, it changed from snow to driving rain, so we didn't get the 50 centimeters we were expecting....pretty much everything that fell has already melted.

More snow is predicted for today, tonight, tomorrow, Tuesday and Wednesday. Pretty much the expected till around the end of April.

Port Elgin is said to be in a state of emergency....Strong winds and high tides flooded parts of the town....don't remember that ever happening before.

In Excess of 20 to 40 Centimeters

2010-01-02T10:09:00.002-04:00

Now that sounds like one heck of a snowstorm....it's coming this way. Some weather folks are saying that it's very similar to the snowstorm that dumped 160 centimeters in this area back in 1992, aka The Weather Bomb.

It's 10 a.m. and the snow has started, but it ain't heavy yet.

Minus 29C Windchill

2009-12-30T05:03:00.002-04:00

Winds at Mount Carleton, NB are cruising along at 35 kms, gusting to 57. Since Mount Carleton's weather station is actually at the St. Leonard airport, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to imagine that the Caribou Wind turbines up near Mount MacIntosh, Jack Mountain and the Caribou Mines area are chugging along at their full capacity. 99MW being pumped out, @ about $75/MWh is clean, renewable energy that NB Power is paying Suez $7,425/hr.

At the same time, NB Power is buying 163 MW from New England at a rate of $69.08/MWh, which works out to $11,260.04/hr. ISO-NE

No point to make here....just thought it was interesting.

Hot Rocks

2009-12-24T20:15:00.004-04:00

I worked on the development of a wind farm for half a decade. It finally got built and is running as of last week. Somebody spent $200 million to put up 33 wind turbines in the middle of the forest, 50 kilometers away from most civilization.

The setup will produce nearly 300,000 MWh per year, which works out to gross revenues for the wind farm company of about $22,500,000 per year. Over the 20 yr expected lifespan of the development, NB Power (or whoever owns it by then) will have paid nearly 1/2 a billion dollars for all the electricity that this particular wind farm will produce.

The thing is, there aren't too many places in the Maritimes or North America which have the strong winds that this particular wind farm has. It will indeed be very successful. But the people who will be using the energy live hundreds of kilometers away from the turbines. The energy will be routed along transmission lines that were already in place. In order to put more wind turbines in this particular area, more, new transmission lines will need to be installed. Hundreds of kilometers of high voltage transmission lines will be required, and the permitting process to get those new lines installed might just be onerous enough to prevent anyone from taking the chance to expand that particular wind farm or build wind farms on adjacent lands.

So, the problem seems to be that the energy is being consumed hundreds of kilometers from where it is being produced. That's not new or unusual. Much of New England and New York is energized by hydro dams in Northern Quebec and Labrador.....we're talking thousands of kilometers of transmission lines.

What if it were possible to put a clean, renewable, nearly perpetual energy generating plant in the same community that consumes it? What if transmission lines only needed to be a dozen miles or less? What if?

There is one tech that isn't really being implemented nearly as fast as it should be. That tech is geothermally powered electricity generation.

Below everyone's feet, if you draw a line straight down, all those lines will eventually meet at the core of the earth. It's estimated that the earth's core is over 5,500 degrees. The closer to the core you go, the hotter it gets.

In order to extract energy from the earth, you don't need to go all the way to the core. You only need to go deep enough to be able to boil water. Nuclear power plants are just fancy water boilers. Same with coal fired power plants. The idea is to heat water enough to let it boil, then take the pressurized steam and use it to push blades on turbines, which then spin and turn generators to make electricity.

My initial thoughts are that every dollar from now on that's wasted on solar, wind, tidal and other renewable energy extraction processes would be much better spent on improving drilling techniques aimed at decreasing the cost of drilling for the heat that's beneath all of our feet.

We don't have to go 6,300 kilometers down to reach the 5,500 degree core. We only need to go between 3 and 5 kilometers to hit the rock that's hot enough to boil water.

Every town and city could have their own geothermal drill holes to provide the amount of energy required for todays level of consumption with plenty to spare for tomorrow's increased energy consuming needs.

MIT did a pretty extensive study on the future of geothermal. It's available here.

Instead of drilling for gas and oil, we should be drilling a little bit deeper for heat. Instead of thousands upon thousands of kilometers of transmission lines all over the place, we should be taking that money and poking holes beneath the ground in every town, every neighborhood.

If I were able to go back to early 2004, I wouldn't have wasted one minute developing that big old wind farm in the mountains west of Bathurst. I would instead have spent every minute pushing for the development of clean, reliable, efficient, and abundant geothermal energy.

Maybe that's what I'll do for the next 5 years.

Dollar Twenty Five Stores

2009-12-22T10:44:00.002-04:00

Now I know I'm getting old. I not only remember when the stuff at a Dollar Store cost a dollar, I also vaguely remember there being a Five and Dime store in the town where I grew up.

All the stuff that's at the dollar store today used to cost either a nickel or a dime back in the early 1970s. And if it cost less than 7 cents, you could buy it without paying the sales tax. Even the Coke machine would give you change when you gave it a quarter.

Ski Jumping

2009-12-21T12:32:00.002-04:00

Maybe my memory is going, but I seem to remember a time when ski jumping winners were determined by who went the furthest in a jump. I'm trying to remember at what time "style" judges came into being.

Mypaint

2009-12-17T15:52:00.000-04:00

I finally figured out how to load mypaint onto my system. For some reason, I didn't see the repository info from getdeb to get all their neat little programs available for my Mint machine.

I've been following the way that the people who are running the Durian project are progressing, which tools they're using, what strategies they take, as they create their epic 9 minute 3D 4K movie out of open source tools such as Blender, the Gimp, MyPaint and others.

I am not an artist. But I do have a way of getting a project to crawl out of my brain and into action. One of those projects is going on line in the mountains west of Bathurst in the form of a $200 million wind farm.

The project I have in mind is to take a great story, find some folks itching for something exciting to do, scrape up some funds, use the same/similar tools as the Durian folks are using and spend the next 7 years making a blockbuster film on a puny budget.

Will I Blog?

2009-12-13T10:22:00.000-04:00

Over the past decade or so, I've played around on the interweb, putting up websites, playing with this tool, that tool....I think I must have had a couple of blogs up previously, but I never stuck with them.

But since I've hooked up with Google Wave, I think that the tools in that will make it easier to remind me to put text and images on a screen and share them with anyone who might want to take a look.

We'll see.