Give me a break

The Copenhagen Climate Conference is coming up. Ready to have your pockets picked some more? Watch this John Stossell video, it will help get you into the mood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHCJ-UhZFT4

Ammunition to use on your Eco-tard friends

The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference starts Dec. 7 and goes until Dec. 18, 2009. Prepare for a media onslaught that highlights the urgency of the situation. Armageddon is on our doorstep.


So just how much of an impact will the proposed reductions in Greenhouse gases have on your life? How much will it cost? How much do you know about our dependence on fossil fuels up here in the Great White North?

Here is some ammunition to increase your energy literacy care of Gwyn Morgan, former CEO of EnCana Corp. from ROB.

Researcher says text proves Shroud of Turin is real!

Sure it is.

Lessons missed twenty years after the Wall fell

Twenty years ago this month the Cold War ended with ballyhoo and beer, not a shot was fired. The Iron Curtain was breached; the Berlin Wall became a gateway to the West instead of a barrier. The decades long sham battle between free market capitalism and centrally planned statism was all but over, or so it seemed. This most extreme form of statism or socialism we called communism was revealed to be a paper-mache façade crumbling in a rainstorm. Its infrastructure rotten to the core, its ideology was as many of us suspected, a lie. By the time the final dominoes had fallen, hundreds of millions of formerly repressed people had freedoms restored that you and I take for granted every day.

The Cold War was the overriding paranoia of my generation. Soon after the Second World War, governments in Canada, the United States and Western Europe created a military alliance called NATO to defend from what everyone feared would be eventual certain attack by the communist hordes. It was soon clear the Soviet Block Iron Curtain countries we feared made prisoners of their own people, and the Berlin Wall was the physical manifestation of this. In the West governments were obliged to fan the flames of fear to keep funding their military spending over the next 30 years, especially in the United States. The fall of the Wall left a vacuum, the enemy was really a mirage and NATO was redundant, and needed new enemies. We all know now where NATO’s new enemies are. Paranoia still lives in the West, but that is another story.

Is there a lesson for us here? In 1992 it took 52% of Canada’s GDP to support government programs at all levels. Mercifully that number has fallen a bit since then, but the bloated size of our governments along with its numerous layers qualifies Canada as a statist country, albeit a kinder gentler statism, statism-lite if you will. Yes we still enjoy most of the freedoms that our cousin’s in the former East Block lacked. But our economic freedom is severely restricted by government spending and taxation. Today 45% of the income of the average Canadian family goes to some level of government for services delivered whether wanted or not. Now, you will say that we get services for that price, but are we getting value for money spent? Does government deliver essential services most efficiently, free of the corruption and cronyism that characterized our former Soviet block enemies. If statism/socialism was repudiated 20 years ago why does Canada still practice aspects of it? Do we think by tweaking it just right it will work to our benefit or are we deluding ourselves like the Eastern Block nations did before the Wall came down? In 2007, the most recent year I could find, Canada’s Federal government had 87 departments or agencies employing almost 334 000 people, including Assisted Human Reproduction Canada and the Office of the Registrar of Lobbyists, both vital to our democracy I’m sure. Remember that’s just the Federal layer of government and it keeps growing.

In his book Fearful Symmetry the fall and rise of Canada’s founding values, Brian Lee Crowley explains why he thinks government in Canada grew so large and ultimately needs to shrink. He compares Canada to the Americans; we are each others greatest trading partners, have similar lifestyles and once had a similar standard of living. According to Crowley, in 1960, Canada and the U.S.A. spent similar amounts of their GDP to support government programs at all levels (Canada 28.6%, USA 28.4%). Our standard of living was similar, differing by just 8% less for Canada. Take a snapshot 40 years later, American government spending increased by 6%, Canada’s by over 20%. Over those same 40 years American per capita income increased by 222% while in Canada just 126% over the same period. Clearly there was a cost to having a big government.

Vatican searches for ET

Looks like the Pope and the Jesuits want to get ahead of the curve this time. Almost 400 years after putting Galileo Galilei under house arrest, the Inquisitors in Rome seem to be becoming more inquistive.
For daring to disagree with the Vatican in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Galileo was charged with heresy, forced to recant and spend the rest of his life in his home. What did he do? He had the temerity to agree with Copernicus that maybe the earth went around the sun rather than the other way round.
Now the Vatican thinks that E.T. (if he exists) should phone Rome. Just in case there is anyone out there the Church wants us all to know that they are "part of creation" too. Hallelujah and lets cover all the bases.

The H1N1 debacle

I wrote this letter to the Globe & Mail the other day:

Marcus Gee seems to think that the H1N1 vaccine debacle is beyond anyone’s control in his column Panic and blame won’t help cure the flu (Nov. 3). Blaming the various layers of the government administered public health authorities is “simplistic and unfair” and according to Mr. Gee “they have done reasonably well”.


This reminds me of the current I’m a Mac and I’m a PC ad. PC implores viewers to “trust us” for each new and improved version of the PC operating system. But in that case consumers have a real choice PC or Mac.

What choice do we as consumers of the vaccine have? The Federal, Provincial, Regional and Municipal layers of government health authorities have colluded with the vaccine manufacturer to control production and distribution for the good of everyone.

Wait your turn is the operative phrase even if you get the flu odds are you will survive, don’t panic. These are reassuring words aren’t they? Maybe central control isn’t the best way to go, maybe its time to think differently.

It’s great to know we have choices in trivial matters like a PC operating system but when it comes to matters of possible life or death, trust us.

Arbitrariness, confusion, fear and panic

Strange week here in the centre of the universe; it started off with a new law, as if we don't have enough laws. The new hand-held wireless law is the Ontario Government's latest attempt to make sure we are all paying attention to the roadway while we drive our vehicles. You would think this is a no brainer and there must already be some law about reckless or dangerous driving (there is), but the powers in Queen's Park think that is too vague. Now drivers will be allowed to push just one button to activate a hands-free device but that's it. No mention about applying lipstick, putting in contacts, peeling an orange, having a hot drink or cigarette or sandwich or doing all of these things simultaneously while taking off your jacket. This seems kind of arbitrary. Soon we might expect a requirement that auto makers put a closed circuit TV camera in all vehicles attached to a "black box" so that a driver's actions may be scrutinized after collisions like airline pilots. Don't laugh.

The strangeness didn’t end there. This is the big rollout week for the recently approved H1N1 vaccine. Media types were falling over each other to make certain the public was well informed about vaccination? Medical types were interviewed, all recommended the vaccine and we all learned a new phrase – vaccine adjuvant. The Americans aren’t using the adjuvant but Canada is. Just to be different? No, it makes what little vaccine there is go farther. But is it safe? Well it’s been used in Europe and in Australia during their winter without adverse effects. Each radio and TV News cast in an effort to cover the story only confused the issue. Much time was given to the conspiracy-anti-vaccination movement. Variations of these groups likely existed back in the day (late 1790’s) of Edward Jenner who first used cowpox blister pus to immunize people against the deadly smallpox. Jenner was ridiculed in the press of his day with cartoons that pictured his subjects as getting cow-like features after vaccination. In fact the word “vaccine” is derived from the original cow-pox injection. The thing is it worked, cow-pox vaccine was improved somewhat, but the original concept ultimately wiped smallpox out, so immunization is not a new theory.

Getting the H1N1 vaccine is probably a good idea if it is delivered in time. The waffling about the vaccine displayed by many people early in the week came to an abrupt end after a healthy 13 year old boy apparently died of H1N1. Parents were spooked, medical officials advanced their schedules and released the vaccine for the most susceptible within communities, but the fear and resulting panic caused long line-ups, queue jumping and frustration. By weeks end things got worse, GlaxoSmithKline, the company that manufactured the vaccine could not deliver sufficient quantities (ironically because they switched from producing the adjuvant and non-adjuvant versions) to meet the demand and now the future clinics for the general public will be delayed. In the end this may reduce the need for vaccination, if the main wave of infection has passed then why bother? It takes a week to ten days for the vaccine to mobilize the immune system in most individuals so if you are vaccinated in mid-November it could be December before protection is effective.

The finger-pointing will begin soon, people will get sick, panic, some may die but I’ll bet the root cause of this debacle will likely be at the feet of government. Sometimes even your nanny-state cannot protect you.

How big government inadvertently stifles enterprise.

The other day I was listening to the Current, a CBC Radio morning program. The documentary segment was titled The Philosophy of Pig. The producer/narrator interviewed a woman, Barbara Schaefer from the Ottawa area who had lost her job as an environmental policy advisor for the Federal Government. Rather than look for another job in her field she chose to become a pig farmer, running her own business. As a farmer Ms. Schaefer breeds and raises a rare heritage variety called the Large Black Pig in as natural a way as possible. Recently she has expanded her operation to other rare heritage breeds of cattle, chickens and ducks. Now this may seem rather unlikely but Ms. Schaefer explained that she enjoys the active life of a farmer over the sedentary life of a policy wonk. So she’s happy and productive, and likely far more productive as a farmer than she was at her government desk job.

The point of this is; here is a very well educated person using her energy and wit to produce a product that would likely not exist, thus creating wealth for herself, her family and the surrounding community from which she buys and sells various products and services. As a government worker she was technically in the employ of the taxpayer. Her salary was taken from government revenue and added to the size of the government. Presumably her creativity and talent were directed at supporting government policies and while she may have produced good work for her department, what was produced likely added little to the gross domestic product of Canada. Now I don’t mean that her government work was useless, it may in fact have had great impact on government policy when and if it was implemented. But as a farmer her efforts are often immediately obvious and her product, if it can be eventually sold, fulfils basic human needs.

Take this individual and multiply her by thousands, there are thousands of well educated government workers whose talent and creativity have been removed from private enterprise so that they can manage, conduct, administer, advice, coordinate, control, regulate, oversee, well you get the picture; these people are not in the private domain, they are governing. Of course most of these people are grateful they have a job and their government job likely has good pay and good perks, and they may even provide a necessary service. The issue that I have is there are too many government employees in too many government departments for me to believe that all their talents are being used efficiently and effectively. I think government is far too big; of course that’s another issue.
Imagine the economic impact on Canada if just a few thousand of these clever individuals were in Ms. Schaefer’s position, that is, in the private sector, the part of the economy that actually adds wealth to the country rather than in government where budgets and salaries are taken from redistributed collected taxes. Imagine the new products, new services, new investments, and new jobs created; it’s all good. Big government not only diverts huge sums of money from the private domain, but also diverts entrepreneurial talent. That cost is almost incalculable.

The Evidence for Evolution......yet again.

I was in a store yesterday and I spotted Richard Dawkins new book The Greatest Show on Earth. I was tempted to buy it but I have so many books to read now that I decided to wait. The book is subtitled The Evidence for Evolution, and the fact is I don't need to be convinced having taught the subject for many years. I'll get around to buying the book at some point - but the subtitle bothers me now.
The "evidence for evolution" is a commonly used chapter title in high school and university level textbooks throughout North America and probably around the world. The troubling part to me is that the evidence takes up a large amount of space in these books often at the expense of whats new and wonderful in the field at the time the book was published. I'm sure the Dawkins book has a lot of the latest information in it but don't you wonder why the evidence must be rehashed over and over again? Of course that's a rhetorical question, I know why. No other theory as well entrenched as evolution has such organized and vocal opposition. No other theory needs to rehash its origins in such great detail again and again. No other theory needs to rationalize its very existence as Dawkins' new book seems to be doing. Texts on modern atomic theory, the theory of flight, the heliocentric theory, Newton's Theory of Gravity and on and on give short shrift to origins and evidence. Newton's Theory of Gravity is still routinely taught in high school even though its been shown to be wrong, but because the math works at speeds not approaching the speed of light, its still taught. Everyone believes in atoms and molecules but the details of this theory are astoundingly complex and way beyond the comprehension of most people, but not a peep of opposition. The evidence for evolution is "over-freakin-whelming" and the theory is simple enough to be easily grasped by a high school junior student. Maybe that's the problem its too simple. Every week new evidence is reported, check out the new "missing link" flying reptile discovery announced this week.
In a few weeks we will mark the 150th anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species" Darwin's monumental explanation of the myriad varieties of life on Earth. Its time to examine that book's subtitle: by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. That is what needs to be studied - that is one of the mechanisms of evolution, as for the evidence, its all around you, if you don't see it get the Dawkins book.

Baraking News............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31nqvyBTWis