Water spill.

Canada, the second largest country in the world, has over three million lakes, 9 % of it's huge territory is fresh water and 60% of all the world's lakes are within Canadian borders. We have lots of water, a lot that we can share with others but we need to protect it, and use it at OUR discretion.

We have the latest news that corporations are presently setting up shop in Canada, and simply siphoning our water into bottles, without paying a cent for it, and selling it world-wide for a huge profit! Nestle Corporation being the latest to grab headlines.They simply set up a facility to collect water and sell it. They didn't even ask who it belonged to.
The Canadian government has said they may set a water policy in the next year or so. The question is why haven't they done it long ago? They anticipate that we will begin charging corporations for the water they are using for profit. Nestle's answer to that proposal of course, is that if they have to pay then everyone should pay the same. Including Canadian citizens. The reasoning, if you could call it that, is that everyone should pay the international market price for whatever resource is being used. Corporations consider everything on Earth to be a Global ownership. 

Many Canadians argue that as we are the actual owners of the water, or oil, or forest, or mines, then we should get a price separate from a huge corporate entity who expects to make money from the resource. 

It can be likened to a man owning a small bakery. He makes bread and sells it for a dollar a loaf. And every evening, he brings home a loaf for his family. He IS paying for that bread in the cost of the ingredients and the time in making it. But some believe he should also pay the dollar a loaf because THEY have to. The baker replies that if he is the owner of the bakery, and he knows how to bake the bread, then he and his family should benefit from his investment and expertise by getting it at a much lower price. 

This rationale can be extended to electric power, oil and gas production, lumber from our vast forests etc. Why should there be a universal price for electric power when the resource belongs to the citizens of the region of the resource?  Why shouldn't the real owners get a break on the price?
We pay nearly $1.50 a liter for gasoline, where the Saudis pay less than ten cents! Why should the Arabs get such a break? Because they OWN it of course. If we pay 10 cents a cubic liter for natural gas, why should we sell it to others for that price? What the traffic will bear should be the criteria. 

There was a time a few years ago, when the Norwegians found oil off their coast. Their tax system today amounts to a 78% tax on oil profits. At first the oil companies wanted much less, and they were told to take it or leave it! They took it and still make billions for themselves. Today little Norway with only 5 million people has a sovereign wealth fund of about 545 billion dollars! Virtually all of it going to the country. (Alaska has about 40 billion and only pays dividends to just a few Alaskans)

We sold California electric power, and when they mismanaged their own deal, they sued us for charging too much! They owed us 200 million, balked and sued and we paid THEM 750 million! Are Canadians stupid or what? If I was the baker, and someone sued me to get his bread free too, that person would never be allowed in my bakery to get another loaf! Do we still have a contract with California? 

So now we have huge resources in fresh water. Everyone knows that. The American mid-west has been in a drought situation for 25 years! They WANT our water. Many suspect the CBC TV show Intelligence was cancelled by the Americans because the plot direction was heading towards the fact that the FBI was politically manipulating Canadian politicians toward some agreement to get our water cheap or free. That's a TV show you say, but the cancellation was sudden and unexplainable. 

The fact remains, that we have the right, and even the obligation to sell our oil and gas and logs and electricity, AND our water, at the price of whatever the market will bear, without charging the people for the resources that belongs to every Canadian that same price. That is the baker getting a break in his own bakery. 

We need to get away from any kind of global thinking about our resources, and consider ourselves first and others as a profit source. Not to say that we shouldn't share it with those less fortunate, but giving it away in certain circumstances to save lives, should have no effect on selling it to corporations for sprinkling golf course greens.

Saudi Arabia has NO rivers. Their water comes from desalinization plants and underground reservoirs. They expect to pay for water. But not gas.
Can you imagine the outcry if the Saudis suddenly put their gasoline price up to $1.50 a liter? Just because we Canadians were paying that price? Would they overthrow the Saudi princes and kings and banish them? Likely they would. 

The fact is that we are an oil producing nation and could sustain ourselves very well on what we already have. Yet we pay an international price. Sad isn't it? And many say the NAFTA agreement deems our resources as American too so we can never hold back anything for ourselves in a crunch. NAFTA only made sure any resources in that contract were not really ours.

Should we give away our water and then pay an international price for it? It is time we took a hard line and managed our resources for the benefit of Canadians. Not wealthy international shareholders.

Take it or leave it.

An oil spill in BC

Officials within the British Columbia government have privately warned that the province lacks the ability to manage oil spills from existing and future oil traffic, and even a moderate spill would overwhelm their ability to respond. 

Ottawa’s decision to deal with BC coastal oil spills from a 
base in Quebec would make it much harder to contain spills, and Transport Canada and the Coast Guard lack the needed environmental expertise to manage them, officials said in the documents obtained by The Canadian Press under freedom of information laws. B.C. Environment Ministry bureaucrats voiced a range of misgivings for Environment Minister Mary Polak.  Did they forget our Coast Guard was recently cut back from Ottawa?

Last year, Ottawa fired internationally respected Canadian oil-spill expert Kenneth Lee and eliminated his research centre in Dartmouth, N.S. This will limit resource managers’ access to critical scientific expertise when making response decisions in the future, oil spill expertise is eroding. And we expect oil company lobbying is increasing.

Even a moderately-sized spill would overwhelm the province’s ability to respond and could result in a significant liability for government. Weather conditions and the remoteness of the pipeline’s route in B.C. could cause cleanup delays, leading to broader water, land and wildlife contamination. 
Sensitive habitats, local economies, fisheries and tourism, and First Nations along the route could be affected. The briefing book for Environment Minister Mary Polak, estimates that at a rate of 500,000 barrels of crude oil a day, a pipeline spill lasting an hour could lead to 21,000 barrels spilling into B.C.’s wilderness. 

Imagine managing that spill from Quebec and start adding up the hours and damage to BC! In May, 2012, documents show officials in the B.C. Environmental Emergency Program in Victoria privately wrote that this relocation would hinder efforts to contain an oil spill on the West Coast. (One has to consider the relocation to Quebec which has no sea coast a political decision for votes) 
And the warnings were written about existing oil traffic, without factoring in future expanded pipelines and many more tankers. 

Remember the Exxon Valdez spill in Prince William Sound in 1989? What's going on up there in remote Alaska now?

In 2001, researchers at the Auke Bay Laboratories dug over 9,000 pits, at 91 sites, over a 95-day field season. Over half the sites were contaminated with Exxon Valdez oil. Oil was found at different levels of intensity from light sheening, to oil droplets, to heavy oil where the pit would literally fill with oil. 

Killer whales are individually identifiable and fortunately in Prince William Sound they were photographed starting in 1984, five years prior to the spill. Two groups of killer whales were photographed in slicks of oil in the weeks following the spill. These two groups lost approximately 40% of their numbers by 1990, and an additional five whales after 1990. Their numbers had diminished by 40%. In some pods, there appears to be no hope for recovery. And some unique populations will likely become extinct as the remaining members continue to age and die. 

With the daily stranding of the oil in the intertidal zone, some is pulled down into the sediments by the capillary action of the fine sediments beneath the coarse cobbles of the seashore. It is estimated that the recovery rate is only 4% and could take decades, perhaps even another century! 
 
Populations of many species of creatures feeding in the intertidal zone are not recovering. Subsurface oil is still leaking polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) which harms wildlife. 


So if you are still with me, you should be aware that Enbridge has publicly stated that they will form another company to run any oil pipeline and transfer point in BC to the Pacific. Why would a company do that? Well, when asked about insurance coverage for a spill, they didn't answer what that would entail in the separate company, leading many to believe that a new company designated by Enbridge would simply walk away from the cleanup costs once they exceeded their insurance coverage and leave the ongoing financial bill to the BC taxpayers! 
Kinder Morgan has not officially tabled their proposal for a twin pipeline pumping oil into their Vancouver harbour terminals.

These two proposals would increase tanker traffic by more than 1000 trips per year. That is 83 ships full of heavy tar sands oil navigating our pristine waters every MONTH! 

And in case you didn't know, Exxon only paid 900 million and is still in court trying to avoid a further 92 million in clean up costs 22 years later! 
The world's largest publicly traded oil company reported profit at $6.9 billion for the second quarter of 2013.


Are you, as a BC taxpayer prepared to suffer the same ongoing results?  

Are you as a citizen of Earth prepared to account for how you allowed such a disaster?

Are you ready to answer your grandchildren's questions?

 

Anti-glitch in a magnetar

One of the strongest magnets in the universe, a magnetar, is unexpectedly capable of a strange new kind of glitch — a mysterious, unexplained drop in speed, researchers say.
Unraveling what briefly put the brakes on this powerhouse's spin could help shed light on states of matter that scientists currently are not able to recreate in labs.
They've called this event an 'anti-glitch' because it affects the star in exactly the opposite manner of every other clearly identified glitch seen in neutron stars.

Magnetars are a type of neutron star, which is the core of a massive star that devoured all its fuel, collapsed under its own weight and then exploded as a supernova. Magnetars are also often thought of as the most powerful magnets in the cosmos, with magnetic fields up to approximately 5,000 trillion times that of the Earth's. Astronomers have discovered less than two dozen magnetars so far.

Neutron stars can spin as fast as the blades of a kitchen blender, up to 43,000 revolutions per minute. Past studies reveal that hundreds of neutron stars can undergo changes in speed dubbed "glitches."  For the first time, scientists have discovered that neutron stars can abruptly slow down as well, a surprising irregularity currently unexplained by existing models of neutron stars.

"Magnetars are spectacular and mysterious objects," study co-author Victoria Kaspi, an astrophysicist at McGill University in Montreal and leader of the Swift magnetar monitoring program, told SPACE.com. "They can unleash extraordinary explosions and have the highest magnetic fields known in the universe, but they're relatively tiny, just the size of a city or so. How do they combine all that? We really want to understand them better."

So here's my answer to the sudden slow down of the object, and the reason for the flash of power suddenly emanating from them. 


Imagine looking at the star as a clock. The star is revolving, let's say clockwise, the core and crust is rotating at the same speed.
Then a large meteor hits the star at the 8 o'clock position, which would cause a counterclockwise jolt at the impact point. That would cause the star to have a momentary slow-down in the crust from the impact, but not the core, and could cause the core liquid to erupt through the crust at the impact point. And because the core was now going faster than the crust would emit that spectacular burst of Xray. 

Meteors travel at anywhere from 15 to 70 kilometers per second! (Around 150 thousand miles per hour) And only burn up from friction when encountering an atmosphere like here on Earth. Without an atmosphere to slow it down, a meteor would hit the surface like a bullet.

 
The revolving liquid inner core would not slow down from the impact, but continue to speed inside the magnetar and serve as a motor because of it's momentum, to bring the crust back up to speed eventually. 

 Magnetar being struck by meteor

Magnetar emitting pulse through crust caused by strike

See?             Simple.

Rubble delusions

The last picture taken of Adolf Hitler on May 30, 1945

"But mine Fuehrer, I vas only drawink Happy Face on der wall to maken you smile."

"Herr Bormann, und you deface our beautiful Fatherland city mitt crayon graffiti?" 

Obedience training.

I had a wonderful Airedale once. For 16 years. He was a great dog, registered Kennel Club purebred papers and everything. Big and strong and smart. Rashi, we called him. Didn't matter, he only came when he wanted anyway.
I decided to take him through obedience training. He was no longer a pup and didn't seem to be too interested in what I had to say. Like a friend you are talking to who's attention is elsewhere and then makes a comment totally unrelated to what you just said. We all know someone like that. But I thought I needed my dog to pay attention.

They trained in a gymnasium. Most of the other dogs were those little furry piglets that women love so much. Some of them are yappy and they just can't shut up. The dogs, not the women ... well, er ... never mind. But you know the type of mini dog, too stupid to realize giving the finger to the biker bar is not a good thing.
Airedales hate yappy. I had a strong thong of good leather as the lead and needed it when the yappy rat-furs started in barking. We learned all the walk-around stuff. Although I think the parents were learning how to 'heel' more than the dogs. Rashi learned all the Sit and Stay commands but didn't think they applied to him. You are supposed to push your hand at the dog when you want him to to stay, but if you're going to do that to an Airedale, you'd better have something in it to feed him.

There was a point on the final evening for the test, when we all went to the other side of the gym, and were supposed to disconnect the leads to our dogs, leave them lined up alone back there in a nice neat row, walk back to the opposite wall, and your dog was supposed to sit and wait for our command to 'come'. Yeah right.

Well, all the women picked their dogs up in their arms and refused to leave them vulnerable on the floor if Rashi was going to be unconstrained looking at them like a line of frankfurters. One left a puddle of fear. Even the German Doberman Pinscher lingered near its owner's protective legs, but they had a bit of history between them when Herr Doberman thought he was in charge of East Berlin and learned quickly that he wasn't. 
Not that my dog was threatening at all, and he tried to make the low growl appear like he was just clearing his throat. But everyone in the gym could read what was in his mind as soon as he figured out what was going to happen! Like a bully kindergartner who was planning to wreck all the other kids Leggo projects! He was just too frigging happy about the challenge!  Sure, he would slip on the polished wood floor, but so would they. Airedales can get excited by their own inner thoughts, I've watched him dream.

So I had to take my dog through the test alone. And though most of the other dogs were the size of overfed guinea pigs, there were no volunteers willing to show that my Airedale would behave himself. They looked just too much like elongated hamburgers! And Airedales were bred to kill rats and varmints in Scotland. How are they supposed to differentiate hairless tails from furry ones? No matter if they're rats, possums or armadillos, they're not looking at that end!

So. I bring him to the other side of the gym. Rashi walking nicely while I whisper to him, "Don't embarrass me okay?" I tell him the sit command, undo the leash and slowly back away. He watches me with amusement, giving a wink at the black Chow Chow up on the stage. I get to the other end, everyone's heartbeat is elevated at the prospect of havoc amid the tiny canines! 
Rashi lies down. Boredom all over his huge furry face. Airedales are always bored unless there is the prospect of mischief close by. They're not like Jack Russells who are thrilled to have a tail to chase, or a Bull Terrier whose job it is to entertain you, and they're good with that, and I love them but Airedales know what they're thinking and don't always share it.

I call out to sit. I get the ignore posture. I need the dog to get up and then sit obediently, to show he understands the training. He just stares at me, like yada yada what-else-ya-got? And the Black Chow Chow, who has already graduated from this training program, seems to have a glint in his eye and my Rashi stares right at him! There's a private joke between them and they both know what it is. I wasn't sure if he was playing a game of deception for the other owners to relax and return their dogs from the safety of their white-knuckle clutches to the bare floor or maybe Rashi just didn't give a shit.

I got his attention again. This entailed me walking towards him, giving a command in a voice that I hoped the other owners wouldn't recognize as pleading but that my dog would, then slinking away again. About seven times! Even the furballs in the arms of their mistresses were silent, too afraid that they might be the one who wakes the wild Airedale from his apparent lethargy. 
I tried to get him up so I could give the come command and retrieve my dog. The one in the manual where he would trot obediently to me, take a position exactly at my left leg and wait for my direction. Just to show it was okay. 
But Rashi looked me right in my eyes, only obeying a stay command that I didn't issue, and told me something: that he knew what the deal was, but he just didn't care. Like a kid in grade 7 algebra who says when will I ever need this? X equals why? There was a collective sigh of relief when I put the lead back on Rashi and gave him a pat for doing whatever it was he did. Just like teachers do in school today when they pass your child in math even though he only got 4 out of a hundred. He did his best.
So all the other dogs got a little rolled up white paper certificate tied with purple ribbon that matched their ear-rings which said they had passed Obedience Training 101. Even the Dalmatian who are known as stupid. Big deal. 
Rashi got a proper hamburger on the way home. For not killing anything.


The reason I thought my dog needed obedience training was that he would be chasing racoons or rats or even bears. Once a black bear came to our back chain-link fence and Rashi just walked up to his side, bristling with the prospect of a fight, saying to me that he thought he could take him. Airedales are that confident. He'd disappear for three days at a time and come home with guilt all over his face from having had so much fun. I'd feed him and he would sleep through the next day. While I waited for the neighbor's complaints. Especially from the lady with the screen door he went through once after her yappy little fur-burger!

So he never passed the obedience test. 
But he had common sense. If little toddlers were around, he'd lie down and close his mouth so as not to scare them. If they became too obstreperous he would just go down to the basement. We had a split level home and he'd sleep on the landing, no way you could get into the main house without going past the dog. I slept very well at night without locked doors. Not that Airedales aren't friendly, but they give strangers only that one lick because they ration them. 

We always treated him as a member of the family. I remember once we teased him so much with the toenail clippers that he just went away and we all felt so bad afterwards for having embarrassed him. If we were all reading by the fireplace on the rug, he was right there with us. At Christmas, we'd have turkey and Rashi would get the cooked neck meat and giblets. Yes with gravy and everything. He would walk around his dinner for minutes, wagging his tail and smiling at us all in thanks for such a wonderful meal. 
He got caught by the Pound once, when he was 14. Wandered away from our yard and some neighbor finked on him. I went to pick him up. He was in a cage, I said, "What,  are you doing in jail?" In his prime no dog-catcher would have caught him. The look in his eye told me to leave out any reprimand and just take him home for something tasty. He was my dog.
I believe kindness and respect for your friend goes way farther than chains and commands.

So he liked us too and stayed for 16 years. I think he's doing fine up there. My daughter had an Airedale too, Burke, he was run over by a car and died very young. But I imagine he's with Rashi now and Burke sees some beautiful poodles in the valley, he says to Rashi, "Hey, Rashi, let's run down there and make love to a poodle!" and Rashi replies, "No Burke, let's WALK down there, introduce ourselves, and make love to them ALL."

Rashi knew things.

Rashi ignoring me

Washington now paying attention?

Reposted from Feb 16, 2007,  It took this long for the government to notice that these dangerous products are being marketed to children. Ignore the WWW Raw comment here and substitute the brutality of MMA as the prime advertising media for so called energy drinks. 

 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday, February 16, 2007

Energy drinks - introduction to drugs?

Are the so called energy drinks an entry point into other 'high inducing' methods of synthetically elevating your physiology? Aside from the fact that they are giving you a potent spike of vigorous activity they might be an introduction into artificially enhanced sports performance. Do young people need that in this era of Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds and Ben Johnson?
During a recent boys soccer game in Langley, one 8 year old collapsed on the field after complaining about sharp chest pains, numbness in his arms and shortness of breath. He was rushed to hospital with a dangerous heart rate and elevated blood pressure. After an ECG the doctors said it was the Full Throttle energy drink he had consumed prior to his game. One can't imagine the parents actually allowing the boy to have this drink, we assume he did it on it's own.
But the fact that an 8 year old thought he needed such a boost is disturbing.
A Brown University study concluded that energy drinks should not be used while exercising as the combination of fluid loss from sweating and the diuretic quality of the caffeine can leave the user severely dehydrated. There are many websites with information on these drinks.

And check out a few of their products, especially Full Throttle from Coca Cola - The heading is "Let your man out" with an explosive can and a huge black ominous looking truck, with a black dressed trucker or biker dude looking as tough as he can. One thinks the demographic they are trying to reach are the same WWW Raw rasslin' fanatics mentality. They even have a page called 'badass downloads' with pictures of that drug dealer looking guy you see on the worst news at 11:00. That guy pictured here is actually on Coca Cola's website!
Some other drinks, many with subliminal sexual suggestions, are Red Bull, Monster, Boost, Rockstar, Hype, Rush, Atomic X, Socko, Fuze and the best of all, Pimp Juice! You can even download a song from their website called 'Doin' what a pimp do.'
Do children need performance in sports? Aren't they supposed to be having fun? Aren't these drinks selling something scary? Are they on the verge of promoting drug use as a way of life? Do we want children to emulate the kind of person who needs these drinks? Is the next step a little pill delivered to the 8 year old to make him run faster and kick harder?
I'm not saying they are marketting to children, but beware parents, a new threat is emerging.
As if you needed another.

Wikipedia info -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_drink

Health warning -
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/iyh-vsv/prod/energy-energie_e.html