Separated at birth?

Minister Bill Bennett and the What me Worry kid.

Bennett is Minister of Energy and Mines and Minister Responsible for Core Review, and he says our BC Hydro rates will increase by 28%  ..... his association to Mad is that the people of BC are suspicious of his motives and are always mad at him!

The What me Worry kid is Mad Magazine's funny looking idiot guy whom everyone likes.

Some consider only one of them an idiot.

Guess.

Spin and scam from the Federal Government

Are Canadians just dumb?

Here's a good one and a perfect example of the Federal Government putting one over on you and the municipalities across Canada. It's about the railroads and dangerous goods.
So here's what they are saying,

'Months after the deadly train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, the federal government is forcing rail companies to tell municipalities when they transport dangerous goods through their communities.' 

Well, it sort of sounds that way, doesn't it?

Lisa Raitt, Minister of Transport, announced new regulations about the transport of dangerous goods on Parliament Hill Wednesday. This is unadulterated spin and a scam against all Canadians who could be put at risk just like those unsuspecting people in Quebec! The Harper government is letting the railroad companies dictate policy, which could be at the expense of lives all across Canada. 

Raitt issued what she called a protective direction Wednesday in the hope it will result in better communication between municipalities and rail companies. She acknowledged that the information won't prevent another tragedy like the one on July 6, when oil-laden tanker cars derailed and exploded into flames, killing dozens of people and devastating the picturesque core of Lac-Mégantic. 
"But what it might do is give municipalities more tools to better prepare for possible future disasters," she told a news conference in Ottawa. "This part is about response and ensuring that communities have the information that they identify that they want to have." That was double-talk! 
How the hell do you prepare when you don't get advanced notice?
Are you as stupid as Lisa Raitt thinks you are? Will this go right over the collective head of Mayors and city officials across the nation? Seems that is what the Transport Ministry is hoping for.

So I HOPE someone in Parliament actually asks Raitt how does a municipality prepare for dangerous goods a year after they pass through? Do you tell the dead people lying by the tracks in Lac-Magentic to look out for the train that went through?
If this wasn't so serious it would be a crying joke! 

The government says that Canadian Class 1 railway companies (whatever they are?) that transport dangerous goods will provide municipalities with detailed dangerous goods information every three months.
Would that be like, Hey, you little town, we shipped a nuclear bomb through your town three months ago. It didn't go off.
Any other company or person that transports dangerous goods will also have to inform municipalities what was transported through the community, but on an annual basis. No clarification whether the culprit railroad, with only a one man crew, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, is a class 1. 2 or 20, does it matter in Raitt's mind?

None of the information has to be provided in advance! 

Is this just an asinine announcement by an idiotic person to a totally gullible public?
Claude Dauphin, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities is clearly duped by the scam, "It sends a clear message that the government of Canada fully agrees that local governments need to know basic information about dangerous goods being transported through their communities." Being transported and WAS transported is a distinction he cannot make, or chooses not to, and it is incredible that he didn't notice.

The airhead Justin Trudeau commended Raitt for issuing the 'order'! And you wonder why he's considered an airhead? What was the order?

Keep voting folks, you're getting what you wanted. 

72 oil tankers crashed - killing 47 people! 

"Look out, a dangerous train went through!"
"It's okay, they're going to let us know."
"Before or after the funerals?"

The Galloping Ghost

Red Grange tests an early football helmet behind Orville's barn.

   "Red is a great football player and a brave man." 

       "Yer Gallopin' Ghost thought he'd gallop straight through that barn wood."

 

             "Ol' Red's frickin' barmy, ain't he? but we shoulda told him there's a stone wall behind that wood"

 

Windows 8 - My Review

START.
I bought a new PC laptop computer. Hewlett Packard Pavilion 15. 8 Gb RAM, 750 Gb hard drive, 2.9 GHz speed. Running Windows 8, right up to date. State of the Art. My old HP and a Toshiba are running Vista, 3 Gb Ram, 300 Gb HD, 1.9 GHz. 
So first impression? Nice and shiny. Fire it up to see Windows 8!

Where's the Start button?
No Start button. They seem to assume you are using your touchscreen phone and a whole cacophony of colored squares appear. Okay, let's see ........ hmm, click 'Getting Started with Windows', waiting while it fetches content, surprisingly slow. Still waiting. Well, try that later. There is a Home button down there but it doesn't work.
So I read about this - there are HIDDEN buttons off your screen, they call them 'Charms' now, you sweep your mouse into the next room to show them ... click back to start menu. Hmmm again, seems to be no Back button around there either.

So I tried another square, and got the icon for that App. (they're not programs anymore) Aha, there was an arrow to go back on that screen, er, wait, it only led me into a photo folder. Not back to the original App. Ok, back to sweeping my mouse cursor way off to the right to bring up those shy Charms again who now seem like frightened mice. Sometimes you have to coax them out of their lair with cheese. 
And this Windows 8 is like the French Language, why say one word when 8 will do, so you click many times to try to go back somewhere that required ONE click of a Back button in Vista. And right click seems unavailable in a lot of the apps.

I now try Microsoft Internet Explorer and wait .... my Trial Edition Norton is telling me a file called tiworker is using 87% of one CPU?  I am not new to computers, got my first in 1987. And have about 4 Toshibas and another HP here right now. I have been through DOS, Windows 3.1 and so on. So this Windows 8 seems like a huge retro step backward to me. Also there IS a Back button on the calendar if you want to go back a month!

I know it's not Chinese, just seems that way

I shut it down for a reboot. So it loaded 500 megabytes of Windows updates! Told me to step away from the machine until it was damn good and ready to work! Some bearded scraggly tech guy in the underground steam-pipe and gear room is trying to fix Windows 8. Or else he's a mole from Apple. 
This is kind of interesting; when I rebooted, the automatic Windows Updates downloaded and installed themselves, and they are huge and so many of them, so at this rate my hard drive will be full before the year is out!

After about an hour of fiddling, I found the Windows Explorer folders. Not because there was a Windows Explorer key or anything, just from fiddling for that whole hour! Back and forth between those hidden Charms. My mouse knows they are in there, but they don't always come out. And who knows what else they are hiding from me? This is enough to send me to the Apple Store!
By the way, I tried going to the Windows Store, the lil shopping bag square, but that wouldn't start, just the circle line going round and round. And round, until I found my way off screen again to start over with Start Menu tile. Again.

So I'm a little frustrated and usually when waiting happens I open a Freecell game and have a go. Nope, many games on that tile which seem to apply to gamer kids. Lots of xBox thingies. No Free cell that I can see. And no matter what I clicked on, it told me to get an update. And when I went back, again, to that charming secret list off screen, and tried several searches, Windows 8 assumed I wanted to search games, so I had to Start again. Gave that up.

So I'll just load all my usefull apps (programs) from disk to PC. And here's the message - This app can't run on your PC - contact softwar publisher. But I did expect this, I am now running a 64 bit instead of 32 bit machine. Fair enough. In fairness, many of my old CD based programs loaded into Windows 8. And the updated apps I downloaded from the web went fine. It remains to be seen whether I can actually be productive with them though. I tried Maps. Bing maps. After a while I saw North America gripped by the ice age, everything white and snowy! But I've been spoiled by Google Earth, mark that on my 'need to download' list along with Chrome and Firefox. Of course the same problem pops up again, no back button so although I don't want to see Bing maps now, I have to do the obscure wave to go back to Start square! Easy so far huh? Are you getting all of this?
Me neither.

Finally got to click the Mail tile, went to my hotmail email. And it goes right to your inbox. But they think you only have ONE so you do the roundy roundy again to get back, now let's see, is there a simple hotmail button so I can look at my other emails? Nope, Bill Gates only wants me to have one. I suppose to make it easier for the NSA to monitor what I am doing. Hmm. So back to right click the mail icon, maybe I can add that other email address. Nope, only make it bigger or uninstall it. Here's the way you do things on Windows 8, control + alt = delete still works, you use task manager to shut off things!
I know, I know, I don't think it's supposed to work like that either, but my head has begun spinning.

Here's another tile with clouds on it. Weather report? Nope Skydrive. Well anyone who can turn a doorknob knows that The Cloud, is done, thanks to NSA again, might as well just drop your hard drive into their mailbox. I am afraid to even click it to uninstall it for fear that it will activate a Start button somewhere and they'll think I am hiding something!

So you guessed it, I am not enamored with Windows 8, I will keep my old trusty Vista machines going for now, I have to do some real work on a computer sometime. Windows 8 seems to be made for smart phones or tablets with touch screens you can scrunch and swipe. I like to sit at my desk to work and can't imagine leaning forward to reach out and touch someone a hundred times a day. 

Hold on folks, if you haven't bought a new computer, Windows 9 might be out someday, maybe then we'll be back to something logical, like Windows XP, now there was a good operating system. I think Bill Gates ran the company in those days. 

Meanwhile I've stuck a pad of charming cheddar on the edge of my screen.



STOP.


addenda: Never mind, the puter is all packed up and ready to return. Couldn't get the WIFI to work after 5 calls to HP tech support and 2 to Shaw and 1 to router. Look at these speed-test numbers = Ping = 23Ms - Download Ms = 0.27 - Upload Ms = 0.44. Old computer is Ping 23 - Dnld 17.05 - Upld 0.49.  

Previous comment about the Start button -  Caterwauls start-windows-8

Addenda #2 - Now have a Toshiba S50D - downloaded Windows 8.1 right away, getting Ping - 22 - Download - 12.00 Upload - .49 and most other things working well! Most. Still get lots of freeze-ups, and you can't do the Crl+Alt+Del to bring up Task Manager. You have to press the Off/On button to shut it down. BAD way to stop it all. Hmm, it is almst like no one was really ready for Windows 8, and the software makers didn't do their homework. Hopefully this will fix itself.

The Awful Truth?

It's YOUR world, not theirs.

Hollywood Celebrity News #2

It's not gossip, it's gossamer! 

In our latest installment, we reveal some of the auditions where actors didn't get the role. 

Ben Affleck seemed a natural for the part in that Aflac insurance commercial. But the director decided that Ben was more suited to play a tired and weary Donald Duck because he slurred his words and wasn't able to seem animated, and besides, the Aflac duck was a better actor.
 

Quack you, Buddy

Ben, caught by paparazzi outside while hailing a taxi, said, "I don' need no steenking duck job." 

Ben went right back to rewriting his Vietnam War history movie to make America the only winners.




 

food goes in here

Meanwhile Guy Fieri was a strong contender to play The Penguin in the latest Batman movie but his requirements for Kraft Services would have cut so far into the budget he was dropped from the project. As soon as they told him it was going to be in 3D he jumped into the Camaro for Diners, Drive-ins and Dives and hasn't been seen since, along with all of the crew's lunch burgers.

Was that Ross?

 Jennifer Aniston had a strange experience lately when she entered the wrong room at Paramount and it turned out to be an audition. She was sent away because the director said the job required minimal acting skills.

The audition was for a stand-in for Jennifer Aniston. 

She only commented, as she walked right past David Schwimmer tidying up the parking lot, "WTF! Didn't they recognize my gold?"  

Never forget who your friends are, Jen. 

Paramount, afraid she might buy the studio and fire them all,  apologized profusely and Brazilian waxed her Bentley.

Jack Nicholson has announced that he will no longer be acting in movies, as Jack Nicholson, he declared he was now Orson Welles and would drink no wine before it's time and that it must be time somewhere.

When queried about reports that he might have dementia, he contested that he's had it since he was 23 and no one noticed then so what's the big deal now? When pressed for further info by reporters, Nicholson said, "You can't handle the truth, now hold the tomatoes, the bacon and the toast!"

He went off to audition for 'Rosebud', unaware it was the Ross Mathews life story.

Use the Force, Luke

Marty Feldman recently auditioned for a role as an alien hologram in the new Star Wars movie Trekkies Strike Back but the producers said it was going to be in 3D and that would be just too weird for audiences in darkened theaters. 
George Lucas said, 'We were afraid of another War of the Worlds panic. Lots of Americans think it is still 1938, you know."

So pull my finger

  And finally,  TED, the Teddy Bear who was a huge hit last year as the foul-mouthed pal of Mark Walberg,  couldn't hold his tongue long enough to complete a try-out for Toy Story Four, he disrupted the whole cast audition by calling Tom Hanks, (the voice of Woody) MorningChubby, Tim Allen, (Buzz Lightyear) Fuzz Right Here, Don Rickles, (Mr Potato Head) Mr. Rotatorhead, and Ned Beatty, (Lotso) Fatso, and kept scaring the females by singing,   ♪ "If you bump into my wood today, you're in for a big surprise." ♫ 

Ted left in disgust heading for a Ted Talk on Saving the Grisly.

Kermit was asked if he would hire Ted but declared the Muppet Show already has a Fozzie Bear and doesn't need more turmoil around the pond.  
Especially he didn't want anybody moving in on his pig.
They already had a bad experience with ALF.

Notes: The publicity agents for Jonathan Silverman and David Schwimmer both deny they are the same person.

You be the judge

That's all folks!

Hollywood Celebrity News #1



 

Voyager leaves our solar system

We knew it was about to happen, and now it has, after 36 years, Voyager 1 finally crosses the threshold into interstellar space. Now it is truly in the unknown.

read here -
voyager 1 leaves solar system
 

and read our earlier post about Voyager 1 here -

Voyager 36-years-later

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. 

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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