Eatin’ Bugs

Insects will be a staple food on Mars and other space colonies.

Paul Pardee :

Lets have the delegates to the UN have a bug banquet to show their support of entomophagy. I know that support from political leaders would help. I’m sure having the Obamas munching on some meal worms while Prince Charles and Camilla have a feast of crickets will really push people towards eating insects instead of food.

Mark Caris :

@Paul Pardee Yes, eating bugs is disgusting. Not wholesome like hormone fed, fecal-spattered beef, covered with a processed pus-filled milk (BGH induced) product, in a bun of pesticide-contaminated GMO wheat. yum.

Of course, a pigs’ rectal lining filled with unsaleable, nitrate treated offal sounds good now, too…

Two billion people can’t be wrong.

@JohnKleinRegina That's the spirit! Over 2 billion people worldwide already supplement their diet with insects. bbc.co.uk/news/world-225…—
Royal Sask Museum (@royalsaskmuseum) May 15, 2013

I haven’t tried it yet, I’m waiting for a trustworthy supplier/chef to enter my life first. That, or critical hunger.

The Audit With a Twist #cdnpoli

$3.1 Billion is missing according to a damning audit of the Harper Government. Let’s see what political pundits recently have said about audit failure:

Federal government audit ‘severely critical’

- The Star headline

“The independent audit [...] speaks for itself, and we accept its conclusions and recommendations,” said Jan O’Driscoll, spokesperson for the Minister.
[The auditor] called the lack of records “inappropriate for any recipient of public funds.”

- The Star

“I cannot in my lifetime recall such a devastating audit. [...] A stunning indictment.”

- Ian Lee of the Sprott School of Business

“It just seems to be difficult to do the basics, and then that raises red flags [...] for the government,”

- Chuck Strahl

John Ibbitson said that the audit will be a smoking gun for people who those who criticize the [government] system.
Rob Silver said that even if the audit was leaked to discredit [a politician] doesn’t mean that it’s not important, and that it reads like any other audit of a government bureaucracy gone wrong.

Embattled Senator Brazman has an opinion:

“Just because [an audit is published], it does not mean money is well spent,” said Sen. Patrick Brazeau, a controversial and outspoken critic [...]. “Where does the money go? Is it being properly spent . . . and more importantly, is it going to [where there are] needs?” “Accountability is a two-way street.”

The perpetually petulant Levant even gets in on the audit pile-on action: “Audit nightmare: The RCMP, [...] should be meeting with [those involved]“

“If the people involved had Italian names and were from the Montreal construction industry, or French-Canadian names from Montreal ad agencies, [...] there would be resignations and criminal charges flying.”

Wait a moment, there’s a twist. The above quotes are all real, but they seem so unlikely, don’t they? Well, that’s because they are not talking about the Conservatives’ most recent audit failure, they are talking about another recent audit of which they were more critical, over much less unaccounted-for public money. They said these things about much less than 3% of the unaccounted-for $3,100,000,000 Harper has frittered away without proper documentation.

Don’t Care About Penny Salami Slicing

There’s a bit of hand wringing going on around Facebook amongst typically the anti-Harper crowd. Normally I’d join in, because it’s worth wringing hands over practically everything our Prime Minister has going wrong in our country. One thing he’s managed to not get wrong, is ending the penny. It’s a relic, and I’m very much for preserving history, but I don’t need to carry historical currency in my pockets when it is worth only a fraction of what a penny was worth when I was a kid in the 1980s.

Why shouldn’t you worry about retailers making at most a couple cents extra on a rounded final total, on cash transactions? Because those two cents are not that valuable to you, for one thing. Another, if you happen to use a debit card or credit card, you’re not affected by rounding yet. If you do use plastic to pay, you’re already paying upwards of 50 cents per transaction to the bank, while your retailer is also paying a fee to the bank plus maybe 2.5% of the purchase price (which they pass on to you through higher prices).

Long story short, if you have the opportunity to pay your retailer in cash, ask that they keep the one or two cents you might be owed, because both you and they are already more than 48 cents ahead of the game the banks are playing with us all.

P.S. And if you read the link at the top of this story, you should note that the Conservatives still haven’t managed to find Pierre Poutine with the help of the RCMP and Elections Canada’s 630+ day investigation. The Cons have moved on to lying about new robocalls though. Since a Liberal MP was fined $4900 for a robocall with a misleading identification, I guess the CRTC will be fining the Conservatives soon too for their “Chase Research” push poll.

Regina Transit Petition

Regina Transit is planning to rearrange existing service to provide a few efficiencies. I see that more investment is needed to make significant improvements that transit riders have been requesting for well over a decade already. As Regina is growing, we’re reaching the limit our streets and parking lots can take, and it’s showing up in the frustrating rush hours that Reginans were not subjected to until a few years ago. Both drivers and transit riders alike stand to benefit greatly from additional money spent on adding buses to the fleet. It’s one of those all-win scenarios that City Council can leap upon and raise the city esteem.

Please get the petition, print it, sign it, and get your voting age friends and family in Regina to sign it too.

Workin’ For The Money

I always find it so interesting to see people making well in excess of $100,000/year. I really have to stretch to find ways to spend it all in my imagination. Feels a bit like Brewster’s Millions.

There are some jobs where I think it’s acceptable to make well more than average wages, and some professions where it’s really not. The problem is our economy doesn’t do a very great job of rewarding all of the people doing work that can keep civilization viable a very long time. It tends to reward hockey players, CEOs of shell companies, and movie stars far beyond what is reasonable. It’s gone on so long though, most people think it’s both reasonable, and acceptable, even though the inequality is striking when someone has more disposable income than a hard working janitor could hope to make after two years of full time work at two jobs.

It’s unfair for society to shame individuals making piles of cash that is rightfully theirs according to the economic rules we’ve all agreed to. It’s not easy to turn down offered money that you’re told is yours to accept. If we didn’t have such a negative view of taxation, and intentionally fail to see how it can be used to provide for public goods, there’d be an easier solution available for individuals and society. That’s one reason why you’re told to be leery of taxes and why there are well funded advocates for lowering tax rates for the wealthy in particular.

SaskPower: At Least 13 Years Out of Touch

I’m sorry Canada, and the world. I’ve tried to convince my province’s public utility that there are huge benefits from dialing down the reliance on coal burned electricity, but they won’t listen. They haven’t even removed or updated a shockingly out-dated “Solar” page on their website that lists information that became obsolete a decade ago. There are such great advances in research, and cost expectations of renewable power, I can’t easily accept that the business people at the utility company are so daft. (They don’t even recognize that Spain’s in the northern hemisphere, so I shouldn’t be so surprised.)

I hope others join me in asking for the tangible results the “clean energy research chair” has brought the UofR thus far, as the province’s leading clean energy research facility. Ask the UofR how many windmills, and how many solar panels it has in research or in production. The answer presently is 1 windmill and 0 solar panels. There are farmers in Saskatchewan with more of each. Is the SaskParty government funding our universities so they can get into this very important area of research? Not really.

I’m hoping another recent letter to my MLA will help prod them along, but unless more people start to put some pressure on the utility company to modernize, I don’t think we’re going to be able to collectively do our part to limit Saskatchewan’s gross impact on air pollution and climate change. I’m really very sorry for not being more effective at such a crucial point in human history.

Liar, Liar, Head’s On Fire

There’s an excellent animation of this sad situation regarding toxic fire retardants, in the video called “Story of Stuff”, which also explores the messed-up nature of our whole global economic system. It’s one of the decade’s must-watch videos.

We don’t want our heads to catch fire while we are sleeping, so our pillows have toxic flame retardants in them? What are we, fire-retarded? Turns out, yes, some of us are:

“A recent U.S. study found that children with higher levels of an older class of flame retardant chemicals called PBDEs, or polybrominated diphenyl ethers, showed lower IQs, shorter attention spans and weaker motor skills than those with lower levels.

Studies have found young children tend to harbour the highest levels of such chemicals since they tend to play on carpets and furniture, increasing their exposure. Some classes of toxic flame retardants, like many other chemicals, are also transferable through breast milk.

PBDEs and similar retardants are also linked to altered thyroid functions in pregnant women, as well as increased difficulty in conception.

The Canadian government has already banned two classes of PBDEs, but critics say that more action is needed. Environment Canada has announced it plans to ban a third class of PBDE by 2012, but legislation hasn’t been introduced.” – I added some emphasis in that quote from Marketplace. The chemical industry literally makes some of its customers less intelligent. Our children are forced to consume fire-retardant laced breastmilk, because of ineffective legislation, and greedy, manipulative corporations. I’d tell them to burn in Hell, but if they use enough of their product…

Conservatives Abandon Community Pasture Protection

If the Conservatives removed protection on all fish in the ocean, do you think there’d be an outcry of concern? What if they allowed every old tree to be cut down, because we could just plant new ones by hand? Arrogance is the assumption that humans have figured out how to do everything by hand better than nature does without even trying.

–
There’s an open forum in Regina today (Friday), to help people connect with others who are concerned about the privatization of previously protected public pasture prairie.

Tomorrow at The Orr Centre, 8:30-4:30 free facilitated open forum on disposal of #PFRA community pasture lands. Lunch $10. November 23 #YQR—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) November 23, 2012

You should be concerned about it too, whether you live in SK, or in Toronto, or St. John’s. Like the state of the fisheries and oceans is a concern to the people of the prairies, so too is the state of the grasslands to all other Canadians. Without some of the natural prairies left for future people to preserve from development, we’ll have snuffed out a biologically diverse and important habitat, and ruined the economy for untold scores of people yet to come.

Questions /comments now. Grasslands National Park is only publicly accessible grasslands in our country. Staff cut, no biologist now.—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) November 23, 2012

It was costing us only $8M to get $58M worth of benefits from the protected community pastures managed by PFRA. “A darn good deal” – Candace Savage, author on the plains.

protecttheprairie.ca and tell Wall and other politicians to continue to protect our land from total conversion away from natural. #PFRA—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) November 23, 2012

The province for now holds the land, poised to sell it at “market” rates. How can the market reflect the irreplaceable value of land and wetlands unmodified by human plows? Simply, it will not, and history will not judge our mistaken removal of protection kindly.

There's presently nothing protecting pasture land from oil and gas development. #PFRA privatized to remove more resistance to threat?—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) November 23, 2012

ConCalls: Giving In

At what point can Canadians no longer claim to be a democratic people? We widely recognize when other countries were running sham elections, but our closeness to our own has coloured perception of crimes here. Some don’t mind so much because the resulting government is the one they think they wanted, and others aren’t even aware of the trickery that changed the result. It seems so unlikely for our quiet, peaceful, democratic nation, and long standing champion of human rights (despite our long standing hypocritical treatment of Aboriginal people). Corruption in Canada? Certainly nothing that bad, we’re just not that improper, tut tut. Pass the Grey Poupon[, or another Pil].

Thwap thinks the time is near (or here) where we can’t claim to be a democracy. Acceptance of a situation creates a precedence, and collectively we’re choosing to accept that 566 days after an election tampered with by illegal robocalls and illegal live calls misdirecting voters away from legitimate polls, it’s normal for Elections Canada to have charged exactly 0 people with the crimes. The crimes were conducted on computers and telephones, with logs, passwords, and solid electronic-paper trails. If these crimes can’t be resolved with this sort of evidence, which ones can?

Today’s blog post deals with accepting the significance of the situation. It seems that it’s only in politics that we acquiesce to the most blatant cheating and criminality. We put up with all sorts of bullshit because we can’t fathom doing what is necessary to respond appropriately.

Passion

Why is there such passionate debate over climate change? It’s not like many global problems tend to inflame heated debate all too often at a local level, but climate change is different because it’s such an old and unresolved serious problem. When acid rain was destroying forests, swifter action was taken to reduce the damage. Climate change, caused by global warming greenhouse gases from burned hydrocarbons, is not as small a problem as the still massively destructive acid rain. Perhaps the industries affected by acid rain legislation learned in the interim how to resist the changes that made them pay more to pollute.

Climate change is a well supported scientific fact, yet there are many people who remain skeptical to an unreasonable extent. It’s healthy to be skeptical of all facts, to a point, as curiosity leads to further discovery. It’s unhelpful to be perpetually skeptical after reasonable efforts to test alternate theories have been exhausted, or if the test poses too dire a risk. Imagine if you were skeptical of the scientific understanding of gravity. You theorize that on Tuesdays after a full Moon, you have a chance of surviving a fall from a 15 story building. That’s an unreasonably dangerous (and foolish) risk if you test that theory.

Why are people passionate over their unfounded and risky theory that climate change is not a threat to civilization or themselves? There are many reasons, but to list a few:

• Job depends on fossil fuel industry, and they see a threat to their income if the required economic and lifestyle changes to reduce pollution are adopted by the masses.
• Religious belief depends on undermining scientific understanding of the world.
• People or media they respect experience one of the two pressures mentioned above, or another misleading influence.
• Some people on the Internet, known as trolls, will take ridiculous positions simply to irritate and provoke other people to respond to them.
• Feeling can supersede thought, so once someone feels a certain way about a subject, it is very difficult for rational discussion to change a mind which would otherwise respond to new data.

You have to wonder why people would oppose the understanding of a theory that predicts catastrophe if we continue on the Industrial Revolution’s course, unchanged. Isn’t humankind’s strength its ability to adapt to changing situations and new information? Isn’t it better to use advance information, rather than wait for disaster to befall some of our peers (or ourselves) before learning to take another route? The answer must lie in psychology and sociology.

It’s become fashionable for people to oppose (or present) climate change information in a passionate, emotionally charged manner, because the debate is not winnable through the presentation of facts alone. Too many people have a poor understanding of climate change, and are proud of the position they’ve taken. To step back and examine the facts would mean emotional discomfort which people tend to avoid if a situation does not appear to require immediate action to resolve it. Since climate change is a multi-decade building crisis, ‘immediate action’ rarely describes how people respond to the problem either individually, or as a nation (or globe).

What can be done to change the negative reaction skeptics and climate change deniers have toward this problem? I’m not sure scientists can out-reason the passionately misinformed, or environmentalists can outspend the misinformation machine that is well funded by the richest corporations and CEOs in the world. It’s a battle to win hearts and minds, and hearts need to be won quickly before mislead minds can start joining those working for solutions to our pollution problems.

How do we win hearts though, and convince people theirs won’t break by setting our society on a search for an economic system that can give them comfortable lives that don’t rely quite so much on hydrocarbon energy? Building systems that people can buy into, and pollute much less with, is one obvious approach. Do we have enough time? I don’t care, I’m still going to try.

Everytime you hear "job-killing carbon tax" repeat after me "climate-killing carbon nonsense." #QP #cdnpoli #climate—
Elizabeth May MP (@ElizabethMay) November 01, 2012