Aboriginal Students Centre Launch at UofR

The expanded space for the ASC was launched on Thursday in the RIC building. Many dignitaries were on hand. Shawn Fraser was rep’ing the City, and gave a short and sweet 2 minute speech. Everyone else was a bit more verbose, but all heartfelt and excited by the newly christened space intended for all students to have a common gathering place with support staff nearby. The older space in College West remains part of the ASC.

The reception after had excellent food, including four kinds of bannock! Baked, baked with Saskatoon berries, fried, and fried with cheese.

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I spoke briefly with Regina MP Ralph Goodale, and MLA Warren McCall. I also introduced myself to MLA Mark Docherty afterward, who I learned had heard of my blog. We traded stories of civic politics and our hopes for improved, honest political discussions around hot topic national and provincial issues like alcohol and marijuana. Having both run for city council at times, we each had to agree that anyone putting their name forward for public service is taking a bold step that not everyone cares to make (not saying that to pat ourselves on the back, Mark noted). Try running, and you’ll feel it too I’m sure.

Forward Together #UofR: Buffy St. Marie – Live Blog

Buffy St. Marie tackled the subject of Aboriginal peoples’ self image. What has been the basis for it? In many cases in popular culture, it’s from philosophers in Europe who never met the First Peoples in their life!

#Buffy event at #FNUniv is almost full 10 min to start. http://t.co/TNO8jZ4K0a—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013

#Buffy lecture opened with an elder ceremony and #FNUniv president. http://t.co/JXQy3d3jYL—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013

The reality is that First Nations civilizations were much more complex, scientific, and peaceful than depicted by European and settler academics and politicians.

Team sports were an invention of Native Americans. Helmets with animal logos. Basically the NHL. #Buffy #APTN—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013

The bully who is running the politicians will keep at it unless you are setting a stronger example. #Buffy We are creative. Grow.—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013

War is caused by greedy people. It is a choice. The wealthiest nations still go to war. #Buffy #APTN #UofR #IdleNoMore—
John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) March 27, 2013

Wab Kinew at UofR Minifie Lecture

On Tuesday I tried to live blog Wab’s lecture from my smart phone, but the WiFi or something else wasn’t working right. The lecture will be online soon, and is on Access Communications coming up very son on Friday and again on Sunday I think I heard. Check it out, it’s awesome.
One story involved how he protested against a memo from CBC brass.
“Survivors” of residential schools were to be called “former students” according to CBC. More than 3000 children died in those schools. The brass did not heed his caution.

Wab threatened to resign from the CBC. The CBC reporters were unanimously behind Wab.

Whenever he hears Mansbridge say “survivor” in the context of Residential school students, he does a little fist pump. I feel like doing one when I hear the media use that word too.

@saskboy feather is a sacred item, I use it to keep me grounded in a spiritual sense—
Wab Kinew (@WabKinew) March 20, 2013

Transportation: Where to go, and how to get there in #YQR

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Most of my speech as heard in the video above, and posted to my Regina politics blog:

I’m very pleased to have been asked to speak at Campion College about transportation issues. I got my Computer Science – co-op degree from here a decade ago, and I never imagined at the time that I’d wind up the President of a different sort of “co-op”, the Regina Car Share Co-operative. At the time, I had no idea that “car sharing” was even a thing. I’d heard of car pooling of course, but they are different. It wasn’t until I returned to work at the UofR, that I got an email about a group of people holding a pot luck supper in Regina to discuss forming a “car share”, and I thought that sounded like maybe a good way to use a car without the unpleasantries of maintaining one. A few years later, I was chosen to help guide a remarkable group of volunteers who make organized car sharing possible in our city, as it is in almost every other major Canadian and American city today.

Why am I interested in transportation? Well, I’m interested in nearly everything, but where curiosity meets reality is on the streets. Nearly everyone in the world has a daily need to move about the farm, town, or city they live at, and so modes of transportation are essential to how and where we live. If transportation isn’t timely or fun, people don’t enjoy where they live as much as they should. I don’t think car repair is fun, and feel dealing with SGI is about the worst thing that could administratively happen to someone (short of being charged with a crime). So I’ve set out to make transportation both timely and fun for myself, and it just so happens that I need to make it that way for the people around me too, in order to be successful.

Another big reason I’m interested in transportation improvement, is that it’s a major contributor to air pollution and climate change. These are not small, or easy problems to solve, but our little daily actions collectively point our society in either the right or wrong direction. Right now, Regina is unquestionably pointed in the wrong direction, and among our collective actions pointing us there is how we get around every day. Since public talks are always more fun with interaction (I think so anyway, because otherwise I tend to get sleepy especially if the speaker has a mono-tone voice like mine,): How many people got to University today by themselves in a motor vehicle? How many car pooled? How many took the bus? How many biked or walked?

Oiled Up

There’s a suspicious situation uncovered at the UofR, by CBC. IPAC, the CO(2) CCS project was audited, and there were apparent conflicts of interest in how some of the money was spent. The report stopped short of saying there was crime, but implied there was the possibility of it.

Only last week I saw a CCTV ad for IPAC-CO2 appear out of nowhere, and I was unfamiliar with the logo they used until I spelled it out and realized it must be for the CCS project. This is the “heart of the Saskatchewan Party’s plan to tackle climate change”, according to Geoff Leo of CBC.

CVI is an IT provider, but they were getting over half of the budget. “There was no set of deliverables.”

One apparent conflict of interest, was Malcolm Wilson for a time being on the board of CVI. He reportedly returned shares so as to not profit from the work.

The Sask Party Minister for CIC, Donna Harpauer said “it’s a conflict of interest”. Wilson, through his lawyer told CBC that when the facts are all in, there was no conflict of interest. A Mr. Fitzpatrick, in the audio interview, said there was “no impropriety”.

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Side note: I’ve appeared in a Global TV report years ago with both Wilson, and Brad Wall.

Shell, along with the provincial and federal governments gave the UofR millions of dollars years ago to pursue Carbon Capture & Storage at their test facility at Estevan. I’ve toured it; they were using North Dakota’s CO2 gas, instead of gas from the coal plant the test site is built beside. To that point, in ~2008, no gas from power SK production had been stored. I assume that remains the case.

Why would Shell, which has little to do with coal power, invest millions into this R&D? CCS has the ‘side effect’ of forcing exhausted oil fields into extended opportunities of production. In short, put the gas down, and oil comes out. We then burn that oil without using CCS, further limiting the net benefits of CCS.

There are presently 0 “clean coal” plants in production in the world.

The U of R, despite saying they are a “clean energy” research facility, presently has 0 solar panels in production, and 1 VAT windmill in research & production.

V-Day Bellydance Flash Mob

Here’s an interview to explain what this flash mobbing was all about.

More women joined the mob after my video recording stopped…

There’s an encore at a mall tonight at 7:30; watch the videos for details.

Medical Tricorder

I got to use a device at lunch-hour today that had aspects of a medical tricorder, the near magical medical scanning devices used first by the fictional Dr. McCoy on the Starship Enterprise. This modern, non-invasive scanner can look at skin and detect signs of diabetes, giving the user an indication if they do or do not need further screening soon.

-Scout DS

I got a negative score of less than 50. Woo Hoo!

This continues my longstanding tradition of sharing my non-embarrassing medical test results on the Internet, so I don’t feel so bad when eventually Sask Health or a doctor loses/destroys them ;-)

Check out Aspen Medical Centre on Twitter. They have a new website too.
“www.leaderpost.com/health/story.html?id=7378570
Oct 12, 2012 – Aspen Medical Canada recently purchased the Allied Health Centre at the University of Regina.”

#IdleNoMore University of Regina Round Dance

Cadmus Delorme started off the speaking without a mic (and was audible!). Here he is with some amplification. Let’s amplify his message over the Internet, also.

The noon hour finished up this way:

It’s my third Round Dance of Idle No More. Here’s the second, on Albert St. First Nations people and supporters in Regina kicked things off for the country on December 9th, 2012, with the organizing assistance of Marie Crowe and Chasity Delorme (who deserve to be considered among the Idle No More movement founders, in my opinion).

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Today at FNUniv is another Round Dance, but not specifically for IdleNoMore.

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.

Regina Related Video

Electric car infrastructure finally in place along the Trans-Canada Highway!

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University of Regina Cougar Cheer Team wins nationals again.