You are currently browsing the monthly archive for July 2010.
A neat tour of the LHC with a few updates as to upgrades, plus lotsa 3D zooming!
Organized religion consistently delivers venal corruption wherever it goes. In Kenya the ruffles and flourishes are culturally appropriate but the mendacity remains unsurprisingly the same.
As a special envoy of the Sky Daddy it is my job to fleece lead you into his good graces by bullshitting dramatically conveying His Word unto you for a nominal donation.
Marginalized Native Canadians protesting for radical reforms; like School!
I’m not sure where Al Jezeera was going with this piece but I do find it interesting to get a non-official look at how we treat our Native Canadians.
“In 2007, the Mohawk community at Tyendinaga, 200 kilometres east of Toronto, blocked the trans-continental rail line and Canada’s largest highway in protest at the government’s failure to address land rights and basic issues of survival within First Nations – including safe drinking water, which the community lacked.
That episode was a hint of the leverage indigenous peoples in Canada possess, as hundreds of millions of dollars in cargo was stalled by simple barricades placed across a rural stretch of the Canadian National railway’s mainline between Toronto and Montreal.
They are referring to the standoff at Oka, I did not realize that it qualified Canada to become home of insurgents.
“In recent years in particular, Canada’s indigenous communities have shown the will and potential to grind the country’s economic lifelines to a halt through strategically placed blockades on the major highways and rail lines that run through native reserves well outside of Canada’s urban landscape.”
You tend to forget about things that are not happening directly to you. I was stirred by the power of Shawn Brant’s words:
“The message resounded,” said Shawn Brant, a high profile Mohawk activist involved in the 2007 blockades.
“We are not going to live in abject poverty, to have our children die, to have our women abducted, raped and murdered without any investigations. We are not going to live with the basic indignities that occur to us daily. We would bring them to an end.”
Yah, good ole’ Canada. We keep our Native Canadians in a deep dark memory hole, we bring them out to apologize once and awhile, but once we are done with them; back to the hole.
Oh and while you are in the hole, we will forget about nasty little statistics like these:
“These root causes, these abysmal conditions for some of the aboriginal people are serious.”
There are more than 800 outstanding native land claims held against the Canadian government. And in many First Nations communities there is deep crisis, with poverty, unemployment and overcrowding the norm.
According to figures from the Assembly of First Nations, more than 118 First Nations lack safe drinking water and some 5,500 houses do not have sewage systems.
Almost one half of homes on native reserves are in need of “major repairs”, compared with 7 per cent of non-native homes.
Natives suffer a violent crime rate that is more than 300 times higher than Canada’s non-native population, while natives represent 18.5 per cent of the male prison population and one-quarter of the female population, although natives only constitute 4 per cent of the total population.”
If my people were being systematically mistreated like this, I would be mighty annoyed as well. The sad thing is that I’m betting most Canadians have little idea what life is like for many Native Canadians. The lack of information or curiosity is a hallmark of imperial populations who are fed only the happy news about their great empire and how amazingly benevolent they are.
Hurrah for privilege! Hurrah for the subtle racism that continues to marginalize our Native Canadian populations!
Hurrah for the invidious status-quo indeed.
I am going to use the discussion points found on RichardDawkins.net as the basis of this feature.
Calilasseia is the author of the post and deserves many rich accolades for assembling so much useful information in one spot. This constitutes an open thread of sorts, please leave your opinions and observations in the comment section.
It is just a short blurb, but an important one as knowing and being charitable toward your opponents positions is vital during a reasonable debate.
Enjoy!
[4] Learn what scientists ACTUALLY postulate, not what you think they postulate, or have been told that they postulate by duplicitous apologetics websites.
This dovetails nicely with [3] above (because creationists always assume they know better what scientists postulate than the scientists themselves), and also dovetails to varying degrees with [6], [9], [10], [11], [12] and [13] below. If creationists really want to critique the theory of evolution, then they had better start learning what that theory actually postulates, as opposed to the farcical strawman caricatures thereof erected by authors of duplicitous apologetics. If you cannot be bothered to exercise this basic level of intellectual effort, then don’t be surprised if people treat your attempts to erect 3,000 year old mythology, written by ignorant Bronze Age nomads, as being purportedly “superior” to the work of Nobel Laureates, with the scorn and derision such attempts deserve.
When I first started Blogging I was all about the hits and stats and ooooh, who is reading me now? About a year into this blogventure I still like looking at the stats and what not, but I wonder why I continue to put my thoughts and analysis out on the Internet for others to partake in?
What do I offer than cannot be found elsewhere (and more finely polished I might add)? What is the function of this blog vis a vis my actual life? Both to a certain extent are unrelated, necessarily so as I am employed in a profession in which one must mind their p’s and q’s when it come to making public statements about topics. The relative anonymity I enjoy here at DWR allows me to express my opinion on a myriad of topics without having to filter for the normative influences and expectations of my career.
It is interesting to take a step back everyone once and awhile and examine the meta-data that surround the assumptions we make and why we do things.
The Arbourist.
Oh! A smooth ride ahead for the citizens of Alberta. Now the Deregulated Powah!
Alberta, Alberta, Alberta… The home of batshite crazy capitalist thinking and tomfoolery in general when it comes to fiscal policy (among many other things).
It is amazing to me that we are in such a mad rush to get back to the good ole’ days of being gouged by private utilities for what should be a public corporation. The Alberta Government has changed the rate structure in an attempt to scare and intimidate Albertans into signing long term contracts with private power companies, whose rates, of course, are higher than the current regulated rate.
I just laugh now when people start to whinge and complain about how unresponsive their government is to their demands. To make thinks perfectly clear, we do not have a democracy in Alberta, but rather a hepped up redneck Failarchy that believes, honest to god and jebus, that the only policies that are worth doing come solely from the right end of the political spectrum. And we (F’n) LOVE it here in Alberta as we continue to vote them in again and again.
The Calgary Herald has some interesting information about the power rates in Alberta:
“The concern stems from the regulated rate option changing in July to be fully based on short-term market prices, rather than a mix of short-and long-term contracts.”
Essentially, lets add instability into the price of power and see how many people we can scare into signing up with the private power companies. People should be up in arms, marching in the street, righteously pissed off with this sort of over-the-top pandering to the business class. But no, past a few irate letters to the local paper the Alberta sheep bleat on, blissfully happy with their Tory Kleptocracy.
Please notice the wonderful phrasing of what in short stands for “Bend Over Here Comes the Spiny Shaft of Capitalism.
“The intent that we expressed with this change is that this would give consumers a clearer picture of the market price of electricity,” Cummings said. “It gives them a clearer understanding of the cost of electricity so they can adjust their usage, and understand better when prices are high and can adjust accordingly.”
Boo! Aaaaaah! Quick run (don’t even think about walking you seniors and low income families) to the private sector to pay them more money for the same power you were getting before! Did you ever wonder who the Government of Alberta represents? If you are not incorporated Buck-O, it ain’t fracking you.
However there is a bit of bright side to the naked ratbaggery that is going on here.
“Consumers choosing to remain on the regulated rate could see more fluctuations in monthly bills, but, historically, electricity rates in Alberta have ranged between six cents and eight cents per kilowatt hour, Wachowich noted. And spikes in price are generally short-lived.”
So those who have more than two neurons to rub together and decide to stay on the regulated rate will be fine, but need to plan ahead accordingly for the minor fluctuations ahead. Crisis put on hold until the insipid clowns politicians that lead us decide we need to more directly fund the corporate elite become more competitive.
It will come down to this sooner or later. All the boots on the ground and drone strikes in the world will not magically solve the Afghanistan problem for the west. Unless we as the so called civilized nations of the West decide to turn Afghanistan into nuclear slag, achieving complete victory(?) will be impossible. A former British Commander in the Afghan theatre said:
“The head of the British Army says he believes talks with the Taliban should begin “pretty soon,” but that discussions shouldn’t lead insurgents to think they have an advantage.
Calling his position a “purely private view,” Gen. Sir David Richards told the BBC on Sunday that he didn’t know when talks could begin. But Richards, a former commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, said, “There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be looking at that sort of thing pretty soon.”
About time, in my opinion. Invading Afghanistan was pure folly in the first place, as any student of history can tell you. Even the general is getting cold feet.:
“He said in any counter-insurgency campaign, there comes “a point [at] which you start to negotiate with each other.”
Yet, we went ahead with visions of protecting democracy and fighting terrorism dancing in our heads. Yet another great imperial army has more than met its match in Afghanistan. The sooner we leave the better.
bleatmop
Mystro
The Arbourist
Dead Wild Roses 
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