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I am a relaxed space conscious driver with hypermiling undertones. Let me tell you what that entails.
If I see a red light a couple of blocks away, I will take my foot off the accelerator and gradually coast toward the intersection. Usually the light has changed and I can gently accelerate back to the speed limit without having to use my brakes.
I am a firm believer in at least a six second buffer between me and the next vehicle. The more time I have to react and assess the situation the better.
Planning ahead is always a great advantage to me, and google maps has become an invaluable resource, along with my trusted navigator to get me/us to our location safely and on time. A corollary of planning ahead is leaving early so that small interruptions: trains, gridlock, livestock, et cetera can be handled without undue stress or risk.
The problem with all of my careful strategies and plans is that the rest of the drivers whom with I share the road with are asshats. I can spend an entire trip constantly reestablishing my six second buffer to the next car as I am continually being cut off by abeforementioned asshats who are busy rushing to the next red light. Rationally, they are neither saving time nor energy has sudden starts and stops is not particularly fuel efficient.
It is for these induhviduals, that I would gladly send a photon torpedo their way.
The teaparty down in the US continues to make noise and chatter away. I wonder if they really know what they are proposing. Liberal viewer with his usual acumen dissects the issue of fact versus ideology in this short video.
When all is said and done in Haiti will things change? Or will the status quo remain? Media Lens has done a excellent job at giving a short historical primer about Haiti and Western intervention within the small island nation.
“In September 2008, Dan Beeton of the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research told us:”Media coverage of floods and other natural disasters in Haiti consistently overlooks the human-made contribution to those disasters. In Haiti’s case, this is the endemic poverty, the lack of infrastructure, lack of adequate health care, and lack of social spending that has resulted in so many people living in shacks and make-shift housing, and most of the population in poverty. But Haiti’s poverty is a legacy of impoverishment, a result of centuries of economic looting of the country by France, the U.S., and of odious debt owed to creditors like the Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank. Haiti has never been allowed to pursue an economic development strategy of its own choosing, and recent decades of IMF-mandated policies have left the country more impoverished than ever.” (Email to Media Lens, September 9, 2008)”
The short form is that, we have chosen profit over people in Haiti. The results are obvious, endemic poverty, economic ruin, desperate people.
“Aristide’s balancing of the budget and “trimming of a bloated bureaucracy” led to a “stunning success” that made White House planners “extremely uncomfortable”. The view of a US official “with extensive experience of Haiti” summed up the reality beneath US rhetoric. Aristide, slum priest, grass-roots activist, exponent of Liberation Theology, “represents everything that CIA, DOD and FBI think they have been trying to protect this country against for the past 50 years“. (Quoted, Paul Quinn-Judge, ‘US reported to intercept Aristide calls,’ Boston Globe, September 8, 1994)”
Yet another grim legacy written in unnecessary human suffering. When we are blind to history, when our media institutions promote, rather than banish, lies and approved truth we lose an important part of our character; our empathy and compassion. Our motivations to help others are not activated because the suffering is cloaked in the twin grey falsehoods of nationalistic myth and self-serving rationalizations.
We owe Haiti much more than emergency aid. We owe them their country and their right to self-determination.
Canada, despite being currently ‘governed’ by a conservative minority government is still a pretty good place to be. The important date that I refer to in is January 28th, 1988. It was when the Supreme Court of Canada made this landmark ruling on abortion in Canada.
Jan. 28, 1988: The Supreme Court of Canada strikes down Canada’s abortion law as unconstitutional. The law is found to violate Section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because it infringes upon a woman’s right to “life, liberty and security of person.” Chief Justice Brian Dickson writes: “Forcing a woman, by threat of criminal sanction, to carry a fetus to term unless she meets certain criteria unrelated to her own priorities and aspirations, is a profound interference with a woman’s body and thus a violation of her security of the person.” Canada becomes one of a small number of countries without a law restricting abortion. Abortion is now treated like any other medical procedure and is governed by provincial and medical regulations.
One of the few times that I’ve actually felt some national pride for Canada. Canada in this one instance lives up to it ‘reputation’ for being a caring progressive nation.
I shudder at the kludge of access and availability of reproductive services in the United States. It is certainly not perfect in Canada, as access is not %100 in all provinces, but at least we have the notion that women are autonomous beings codified in law and can use the law to further access to reproductive services across all of Canada.
From the CBC –
SPRINGFIELD, Mass. – Police say a man who stuffed 75 bottles of body lotion in his pants couldn’t slip away from authorities, hampered by slacks that were nearly bursting at the seams.
I mean really. Really? What would possess anyone to stuff 75 bottles in ones pants? Of course, if it is hand lotion…its frozen shrimp.
BRADENTON, Fla. (AP) — Authorities say a Bradenton man tried to steal several bags of frozen shrimp from a supermarket by hiding them down his pants.
The shrimp incident was from 2008, this was 2010. I wonder if the urge to act foolish in public is on a two year cycle or something.
Sometimes I get curious about what lies below the fold on some the less traveled pages of the CBC website. I found this:
“The scientist in Dr. David Dosa was skeptical when first told that Oscar, an aloof cat kept by a nursing home, regularly predicted patients’ deaths by snuggling alongside them in their final hours.
But his doubts eroded after he and his colleagues tallied about 50 correct calls made by Oscar over five years.”
The article goes on:
“After a year, the staff noticed that Oscar would spend his days pacing from room to room. He sniffed and looked at the patients but rarely spent much time with anyone — except when they had just hours to live.
He’s accurate enough that the staff — including Dosa — know it’s time to call family members when Oscar stretches beside their patients, who are generally too ill to notice his presence. If kept outside the room of a dying patient, he’ll scratch at doors and walls, trying to get in.”
The cat is the bringer of death. Seems sort of fitting for a kitteh :)
I am glad to see the Tories neck and neck with the Liberals in the polls. Perhaps our haughty PM can shelf his pride and start listening to what Canadians have to say. I doubt he is even concerned with the poll to be honest though. He needed time to stack the senate (the one which he has tried so very hard to make elected) in his favour so he can more easily push through his parties’ legislative agenda.
The ECOS poll results from from January 27th, 2010 to February 2nd, 2010.
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