Wikileaks’ founder is again being framed for a crime he didn’t commit in Sweden. You can read how I know he didn’t commit a crime there, here. The co-incidental timing of the charge with Wikileaks largest release of top secret American documents, is too great for people to brush off. The CIA or whoever orchestrated this is counting on the smear tactic sticking even after it’s formally discredited.
It comes as no surprise to most people, tar (oil) sand boosters or boo-ers alike, that tar sand strip mining increases water pollution in the mined region. The same is often said about the sites of uranium mines too, but this article focuses on tar sand pollution.
Governments in Canada are desperately trying to pull the wool over peoples’ eyes, and they might succeed. There are swarms of loyal monkeys pounding at a million keyboards in Canada, libeling the people responsible for the most believable research around tar sand mines and untapped bitumen deposits. I became curious why one of the monkeys commenting on the CBC.ca story mentioned David Schindler as a source of biased research.
Not being a servant monkey of the Conservative Party or Small Dead Animals crowd, I did a Google search to learn about this scientist who the right wing are vilifying. It turns out Schindler’s not famous for biased research (big surprise eh?), but he is famous for identifying well known water based pollutants as the cause of serious environmental degradation in other Canadian bodies of water. Do acid rain and phosphates sound familiar? They were among the last pollutants that Canadians gave enough of a damn about to actually make an effort to reduce through legislation.
No wonder the servant monkeys are working overtime to keep Schindler’s work out of the eyes of Canadians.
From NSERC page on Schindler:
Responsible for major advances in our understanding of the effects of phosphorous and acid rain on lake chemistry and organisms. This research was influential in leading to restrictions in phosphorous content in detergents and changes in air quality legislation in Canada, the United States and the European Economic Community. More recently, he has made important advances in our understanding of the effects of global warming and of increased ultraviolet radiation (from stratospheric ozone depletion) on boreal lakes.
There are ongoing efforts by people with more money than Bill Gates, to limit your freedom on the Internet. These people would provide you with inferior network services so you cannot compete in business, or entertainment, unless they say so. OK Go’s Damian Kulash explains in plain English how important it is that the people of the WWW win the fight against online segregation.
And here is is with his band, singing up a creative storm.
When I went to Vegas the other month, I lost $11US at the slots. I’ve put in about $80 lifetime at VLTs and casinos ($1 at VLTs, and I broke even). It appalls me that the AVERAGE Sask. household spends a month’s rent on gambling in a year. That it doesn’t bother Minister Cheveldayoff, says a lot about the priorities of the Sask Party government. It’s not there to protect people, it’s in the business of exploiting them, and is proud of it!
To Ken Cheveldayoff, the minister responsible for the Saskatchewan Gaming Corp. — which runs the casinos in Regina and Moose Jaw — the relatively high per-household expenditures are a good indicator that speaks to the quality of Saskatchewan’s casinos.
“I would credit SIGA and [SGC] gaming with marketing very well, with providing an attractive and a positive entertainment experience for people,” he said. “That’s why they keep coming back, that’s why they do well.”
Cheveldayoff said he’d rather govern a province that spends the most per capita on gambling than the least.
People with gambling problems are building our roads and hospitals according to Cheveldayoff. It’d be interesting to see how much money is spent on gambling addiction, and how many people have gambling problems in this province compared to other provinces.
It’s perhaps not a coincidence that in the same week that a Saskatoon bridge was shut down by inspections, that Highway 2′s important bridge between Saskatoon and Moose Jaw is ruined by a falling crane doing repairs. I recall a few years ago learning that Saskatchewan’s bridges do not get as many inspections as are required to keep all of them safe. Our politicians are spending our taxes on too many unimportant things, and are leaving our infrastructure to become substandard. My Dad could have been killed in the Highway 2 bridge collapse; he was on it less than 24 hours ago. Commenters on CBC.ca remarked having similar fears about their own families.
Long time readers of Abandoned Stuff will know that I don’t frequently get into my relationship details. Sure, I talk about who I’d vote for, where I travel, and what movies I watch, but not often do I gush about who I love. This post is an exception, for an exceptional lady, April.
Last night, after April jokingly proclaimed “At this rate, I’ll never be married!”, we went out with friends to walk our dogs. After we watched the International Space Station give us a fly-by and while April had the two of us watch a Star Wars Family Guy cartoon, I wrote the following proposal on my iPod. I then sneaked away to a computer, posted it to UsedRegina.com (where April used to read those amusing, “I Saw You” classified ads), and Facebooked & Tweeted the link to the ad. She gets my Tweets and Wall posts, so two minutes later asked me what my Facebook status, “I’m about to change my life for the better”, meant. I took her to the computer where I had a song queued up, and the ad ready to click; I got down on one knee while she read it, and presented her with a gumball quality ring that fit, with the real ring (needing to be correctly sized), in my pocket still. She looked at the ring, clearly hesitant to say yes to a ring that was not even close to one she’d pre-selected as a candidate. So I took out the real one, and she said yes, after giving me pregnant pause for dramatic effect.
Found: One spectacular woman
When I found her on the Internet, she was pillaging small villages and dumpster diving. Almost as soon as we met in person she ate my BBQ chicken, nervously flicked tea into my eye, and stole my heart. Those are all very good things.
I found love on the Internet, so I’m declaring it here too.
I love you April,
Will you marry me?
Love, [Saskboy]
She makes me laugh and enjoy life more, every day.
Saskatoon has bad traffic at the best of times (for Saskatchewan anyway), but it’s worse now with the closure of the Traffic Bridge. This leaves clever people to ponder why there aren’t more people in Saskatoon biking to work instead of driving cars. The weather is great, the exercise is good for most people, it costs nothing in gas, and the city should be encouraging it by installing more bike racks and painting more bike lanes.
If I’m not borrowing a vehicle, or sharing one, my primary transportation is city bus or bicycle. My Buick sold last week. That’s an average of $8400/year I don’t have to spend on a car now. I also don’t have to bother getting oil and transmission fluid changes, washer fluid, trunk hydraulics, fuel gauge repair, air filter, cabin air filter, temperature sensor repair, Winter tires installed, etc. And I won’t be scraping windows in the Winter either.
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Rantwick has a fun sign on the back of his bike, I’d consider doing this.
And if a media station headed by a recent former Conservative mouthpiece doesn’t concern you, then you’re not aware of how damaging George Bush and Fox News were for the United States the last decade. It’s not cool to be dumb, and until more people realize that it’s not smart to have dumb leaders, everyone will suffer from dumb leadership.
ADDED:
Why doesn’t CBC mention that this sort of Russian incursion is nothing out of the ordinary, and that the CF-18s were not even required to repel the non-threat. The Conservatives are playing up a threat that isn’t there, to justify their ridiculous $9Billion F-35 boondoggle.
This is a temporary blog, as the main blog software is offline. You can access archives through archive.org in the meantime, with specific URLs. Contact saskboy at his hotmail.com address
