Canadian Musings

I'm getting old. I remember a simple loaf of bread costing about $.89. But I don't think that was that long ago, maybe three or four years.

This week, I had to pay $1.59 for the crappiest loaf of white bread the store sells. They wanted $2.69 for another loaf with plenty of preservatives and a "freshness guarantee".

Enough is enough, I sez to myself.

So I bought myself a breadmaker. Nice little machine.

And I've learned that the shelf life of flour is probably something shorter than the 15 years I'd had my previous bag of flour: The first attempt at baking resulted in a pile of goop instead of dough. New bag of flour, nice dough. Mmmm.

On this day that we remember a promise made, and kept about 2000 years ago, let us all celebrate and give Praise and Thanks to the Lord, our King!

But according to CTV, the Liberal Party claims to be divided on their own understanding of the Charter.

The Liberals claim that Same Sex Marriage is a "Charter issue". But they also claim to be divided on the question of SSM. Do they not believe in their own interpretation of the Charter? If it is a Charter issue, there would be no debate and no division.

How stupid to the Liberals think Canadians are?

The motto of the Boy Scouts is, "Be Prepared."

And finally, the Canadian Government is acknowledging that it's important to be prepared, with a new television ad recommending that every household have an emergency kit with the necessities for about 72 hours (three days).

The list for a basic kit includes staples such as food and water, candles, and tools to use them (e.g. manual can opener, sturdy candle holder). Warm sleeping gear is recommended, but little is said about how one might replace a lost source of heat in the winter: candle heat will only go so far in a Canadian winter.

It's a start, but I'd be much more content with a much broader emergency plan, where neighbourhoods have a designated shelter powered with well-supplied generators and containing either an emergency stock of food and water (inventoried and re-sold through various stores over time to maintain freshness of stock), or contracted emergency access to food and water from local suppliers.

And in a more ideal world, we might even see "conversion kits" become standard equipment in cars and homes: the ability to switch house power from Line to Local (powering high-priority circuits only), supplied by a generator attached to one's automobile.

Today's Ottawa Sun includes an article suggesting that federal prisoners should get a raise in "pay", with some officials suggesting that prisoners should get "minimum wage" for work they do, in order (so they say) for these prisoners to more easily re-integrate in society.

But these prisoners do not have to pay their daily bills while in prison. They get free room and board. Sure, they have to buy their own luxuries such as cigarettes and chocolate, as well perhaps as certain more necessary items.

And the experts warn that if these convicts don't have enough money, they might have to turn to loansharks within the prison, who might even target the prisoners' families outside prison for repayment in their underground prison economy.

But ... let's imagine what would happen if prisoners made, say, $100 a day. Supplies of goods are limited, and opportunities to spend are also limited: the motivation is to drive up prices, not to turn these criminals into investors. Indeed, if they had spare cash they would tend to invest in the locally obtainable goods, since they neither have ready access to, nor trust in, stockbrokers.

So the prices of controlled goods would skyrocket inside prison walls. And those who have no money, and need goods, would still have to turn to a burgeoning loanshark industry inside the prison walls. But now, "real" money would be at stake, and the families of prisoners could face real jeopardy. Few prisoners would want the added jailtime for committing a murder (even in Canada, where such jailtime is often minimal), over a debt of a few dollars. For a few hundred, or a few thousand, who knows what violence might ensue.

This is over and above the obvious problem: that rent, utilities, food (and food preparation), and other normal household expenses borne by the law-abiding citizens who earn minimum wage, are paid by law-abiding taxpayers and not by the prisoners themselves. It is a nominal deduction for those expenses which leaves prisoners earning a net daily wage today of merely a few dollars a day - perhaps a couple hundred dollars a month.

That's more than many people who live law-abiding lives at minimum wage jobs. More than most single parents in minimum-wage jobs. Plenty for someone who has, by their own actions, disqualified themselves from the privileges of society for some period of time.

I'm very confused by the fact that Rannie's sitemeter is showing a few thousand fewer hits today than it did yesterday. Yesterday, as recorded here, it was at 923,537 and counting. Today, it's at a mere 919,605.

Who can lose more than 4,000 visitors in just a couple days? Where can they go? How can SiteMeter maintain any credibility, if it simply chooses to "lose" several thousand visits in the course of a few hours?

Rannie will make his million visitors soon, I'm sure.

But the questions for SiteMeter will remain for a while.

PhotoJunkie is approaching the milestone of his one millionth visitor. For those who are unfamiliar, Rannie is one of the great photographers around Toronto, posting many of his pieces online in his blog.

To celebrate that milestone, he's announced a "One Million Giveaway Extravaganza" of a few prizes for those who comment on, or link to, certain of his posts, such as this one.

As I type this, Rannie's site meter sits at 923,537, with a current average of just under 1000 visitors every day. Rannie is hoping to hit The Million before the end of January, and it can be even earlier if we're all successful at promoting his site further. Let's do what we can, shall we?

Global Warming is an "accepted truth" among many scientists. And even I will readily admit that anthropomorphic (i.e. caused by man-made factors) influences are non-negligible, and need to be addressed.

But the pseudo-science being expressed by many needs to be cleaned up, and fast. Some claim that population growth follows an exponential growth curve: it does not. Rather, it follows an S-curve. Or, more correctly, it follows one of many S-curves.

Population growth studies will predict an S-curve fit under a given set of conditions. If conditions change, a different S-curve might be adopted. But populations do not generally follow exponential growth (and cataclysmic drop-off). Changing conditions might include improved life expectancies, or industrialization of the food supply, which might lengthen the interval of highest growth rates.

But under today's world conditions, the period of most rapid population growth (in percentages) probably occurred in the 1960s or 1970s, and rates of growth are now slowing. Most credible estimates suggest world population will cap-out around 9 or 10 billion, sometime between the year 2050 and 2300.

But this isn't the most grave flaw of these political scientists cum environmentalists. They tend to fail to espouse basic economic principles. Some predict the end of modern economies as current oil supplies "run out", completely ignoring the economic facts that (a) oil is not going to "run out" anytime soon, (b) the only thing in short supply is "conventional" oil, and new and long-lasting sources are viable as the price of oil rises, (c) there are many, many potential sources of energy, the choice of which is first and foremost an economic one.

For example, solar power is available today. But it is more expensive, per unit of energy, to produce the solar panels than they produce in their current lifespan. Generally, the same applies to wind energy: these alternative sources are only viable with government policies to subsidize these sources of energy. If conventional energy prices continue to rise, they will become more attractive and will be more widely adopted. Until then, they are a waste of energy and a pollutant (as they, too, must be discarded at the end of their useful life).

All of this masks a highly dubious model claiming to understand causes of observed effects. We can see the temperature of the earth's surface rising by fractions of a degree over decades. We can blame Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas (GHG). We know there are other pollutants which also contribute, such as methane (CH4). And we know that certain sources contribute CO2 and other GHGs to the atmosphere. But while we have a temperature model, we do not have an inventory model of the GHGs in the atmosphere: we do not have a catalog of the sources and sinks of GHGs, which we can test against measured GHGs in the atmosphere. We do not know how much is being released by automobiles, by bacteria, by cows, by decaying leaves and tree trunks in forests.

We find instead a few political science grads with coal-fired energy plants in their sights, simply because they represent large single-entity sources of GHGs. We don't even know how great a percentage they represent on a per-capita basis, of all the anthropomorphic GHGs released. We don't even know how great a percentage anthropomorphic GHGs represent to the overall total (although "they" will point to graphs correlating the growth in overall GHGs and temperature to population growth).

Until we focus on the science and abandon the useless rhetoric we will not be able to achieve any positive results for the future.

A number of the bloggers I turn to on a regular basis have gone on hiatus lately. And my regular reader will note that my own posts have tended to be fewer and farther between as well.

I'm not officially declaring a hiatus. But I don't feel any sort of commitment to post on any particular schedule, either, and will post only when I feel the need to do so.

It's summer. There are better things to do than read my few words. Or to type them. Enjoy!