Toadfish Monastery

...because I'm not particularly enthused with the new King.

Any comments on the coronation? I don't have any particular ill will toward Charles, but wish we could just leave the Queen on our coins.  I didn't mind Elizabeth, who I always thought looked a bit like my gran. She'd been in the role for so long that she was synonymous with it, where Charles's previous life brings a lot of baggage to the throne. The monarchy could quietly fade into the background at this point, at least from my position in The Colonies.

I see that this time around, the public will be encouraged to swear to the King. Do you think "F*ck Chuck" is appropriate? 

a true story, written in response to the question mentioned in the second line. I ain't a poet and know nothing of the finer points and proper structures, but sometimes one falls out in whatever form it prefers to be in

Poems on a Shithouse Wall

She asked me,
"When's the last time you wrote a poem?"
I said I didn't know
Last summer, maybe
Polished up an old one a few months ago
Surreptitiously stumbled out some stanzas
of silly songs
Just to amuse myself

But maybe I was wrong
Because a couple of weeks beforehand
I built a shithouse from salvaged scraps
of a shipping crate that sat
Abandoned at the brewery throughout the winter

And a glorious shithouse it is
Blood and sweat, bent nails and blue-tongued curses
A week of every spare second I could scrape together
Warped timber, cracked plywood and a handle made of leather

Designing on the fly, forging foward without a plan
to craft a receptacle of relief
For the boys swinging hammer
at the site where my house will sit

For it's need that guides my pen
When I need a poem to ponder
And the need to pinch a penny (and a loaf)
Built that shithouse over yonder

They tell me that the practical is merely craft and not creation
And that only art in abstract holds the key to liberation
But at least to me, that shithouse is a thing that's truly full of art
And at least to me, art without need is the thing that's truly full of shit

Getting tired of using webmail from ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ('cuz I don't like being logged into the bigdata machine all the time).  How do I go about setting up my own private email? Presumably I'll need some sort of webhosting?  I do have a parked domain with Dreamhost that would work just fine as an @domain.com address.

I'm a Firefox user and would probably try Thunderbird unless there's a particularly good reason to use something else (I'm used to Outlook from my cubicle days).  I'm not sure how to set this sort of thing up on the web end, though.

Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on September 25, 2015, 10:04:42 PM
Some in the middle class may put the noose on themselves at times but the overwhelming majority of people doesn't have much of a chance, you have to live somewhere, you have to be able to get to work, you aspire to a better salary so you "invest" in an education, and if you are normal enough you may have a child or two and then you have to pay for all the things involved.

I'd be interested to know how someone can avoid:

-paying rent and/or mortgage.
-paying for child care and/or education.
-paying for transportation when there are no available alternatives.

and more importantly:

-paying for a debilitating illness in the family.

The 0.1% seem to suggest that you should work at least 16 hours a day, don't get sick, don't get children, don't get married and spend all of your income paying for your housing and education.

People don't go broke because they pay for cable or cellphones, but because they get sick or they lose their job/hours. In the meantime the banks are laughing all the way at all the debt they acquired while dangling cheese on poorly informed people.

Sorry, caught myself speaking from a privileged position north of the border. It sometimes slips my mind how different the US is.  

Some of my rallying against discretionary spending is also from that perspective; food, alcohol, telecommunications, fuel, consumer goods and non-essential services are significantly higher here than there. Real estate tends to be higher in many cases, too (we didn't see a property bust of major magnitude in the crash of 2008).

I assume health care in the States remains brutal to the Canadian perspective? Obamacare has hogged the spotlight for a while now, and I haven't heard as many reports from the front about where medical costs have settled out.  It's well-known up here that one dare not set foot in the US without taking out lots of supplemental medical insurance.  I don't have an answer to financially surviving a debilitating illness in the family other than an overhaul of the system.  It's not really a part of the Canadian narrative.    I've got a cousin who's gone at least a dozen rounds with melanoma in pretty much every part of her body (skin, lungs, brain, lymphatic system, various organs and tissues) and while I'm sure some of the pharmaceuticals involved are very expensive, unbearable financial impacts haven't been part of that discussion that I know of.

Education costs have been going up here, but still remain more or less affordable to pay back relative to one's career path (i.e. med school debt is massive, but doctors can afford to pay it back in a short period). It's possible to access grants and loan-forgiveness programs especially if one pursues education for jobs where demand exceeds supply. I've heard that universities in the US have been cranking up tuition fees and taking more of a profit-oriented approach.

Childcare is a killer; I mourn the loss of a one-earner family system that allows parents to parent their own children - not necessarily the mother. I support equal rights for men to be the primary caregiver and/or equally share the parenting and earning.  The deck is horribly stacked against the latter in the corporate world, which demands over-availability and isn't interested in retaining someone who can work only 20-30 hrs a week. Then again, it's not that uncommon to hear of families where one earner's income is only a couple of hundred dollars higher than child care costs.  That doesn't seem logical to me... wouldn't it be better to stay at home with the kids and be able to capture some of the additional savings that go along with that? (less reliance on convenience foods, more time to look for bargains, in some cases the ability to home-grow a good percentage of the family's food)

Transportation is a killer too...  I've gone this year from a centrally located house where I could walk to work and most amenities to a short commute (10 km or less, but lots of hill and corners).  That in itself has spiked my transportation costs significantly, by up to $100 per month in fuel, not to mention wear and tear on my vehicle. I don't have a practical way to reduce that cost.  When I lived in a major city, I made a point of living downtown within walking distance of work (as little as half a block in one case), but this isn't always practical for families and can also result in higher rent.  I'm not sure I'd go back to living in a flat, either...  I can take low square footage, but need some outdoor space attached. That being said, it's getting increasingly rare to find someone in the middle class who has a vehicle fully paid off. A car is often a big status-piece, so while low-income folks tend to be fairly canny about hanging onto their vehicles for 10+ years, there's an income threshold at which many people would prefer to make monthly payments on a new $20,000 - $30,000 car with no down payment rather than save up enough to buy an older but equivalent model car for a fraction of this price. Under a certain price point, I realize that maintenance and repairs can make a cheap beater a bad investment and money trap.

I have answers to avoiding rent but they are not applicable to the general population.  That being said, the status-driven chase for higher gross income can distort the rent question.

When I was living in the city during oil boom years, $80,000 per year felt distinctly lower middle class _{(my ex-wife essentially left me at this income level for being too poor )} In the small city where I live now, that sort of income is considered very desirably upper middle class, and any sort of 6-figure income puts you in Rich F*cker territory. Cost of living (esp. fuel and consumer goods) is considered to be much higher here, but anyone with a small backyard can grow at least half of their yearly produce cheaply and easily due to the climate, and rent is significantly less.  One other factor that probably isn't discussed much is the cost of one's wardrobe in a white-collar job, and for city living in general. Business wear isn't cheap, and looking the part is a factor in career advancement; this becomes much less of a factor in a more casual environment. Trying to replicate a small-town standard of living in a larger centre means living in the suburbs with a long commute at the start and end of a long work day (and all associated transportation costs), which becomes demoralizing and effectively drops your per-hour salary.

It's also difficult to find intelligent employees with a decent work ethic here (as most flee to the cities where the gross earning potential is higher), so it becomes quite easy to be a superstar employee.  I've been given multiple job offers just from being hardworking, efficient and cheerful while volunteering at events or working temporary jobs. Smaller centres are good for networking, and with a higher proportion of small businesses as employers it becomes easier to secure long-term employment that is less prone to mass layoffs.  When owners interact constantly with their employees, they tend to see them as people more than as numbers (finding a good boss, OTOH, is not always easy). It's not a stretch in a smaller town to hold the same job for decades, provided the business itself keeps afloat.

Some of these factors (not including medical costs) are so tightly interlinked that while it's possible to optimize them, it really needs to be done at an age where one is not ready to tackle these sorts of problems. For instance, if a young person can objectively look for career areas that take a minimum of education to get into a well-paying job that is undersupplied with skilled workers, and be willing to move to a less desirable/more remote area of the country for the first few years of one's career, it's possible to get ahead of the curve a bit and have some flexibility.  Canada's resource economy has made this possible for quite a while, although it's not as rosy at the moment with the price of oil down.

This isn't the case for the majority of US workers, perhaps. Blue collar jobs have declined and/or no longer pay a decent living wage, so there's been  a scramble for white-collar cubicle jobs. This has given employers the upper hand in squeezing every last drop of work out of their employees, by holding an axe over the head of anyone who doesn't comply.

---

I suppose I rally against discretionary spending because it seems like the easiest way to cut cost of living.  The current push towards perpetual monthly payments on goods and services (especially online services, but also for financing purchases and leasing toys) frightens me, because this is the sort of system that makes a job loss or inability to work result in a major life disruption. It becomes a trap that reduces flexibility of employment and allows exactly the type of employer leverage that is grinding workers into the ground. Rent and food are always going to be necessary costs, but adding a $300+++ car payment, a $150 telecoms bill (phone, net and cable commonly costs more than this here), $200++ minimum monthly credit card payments and a few modest cloud-based service on top of this makes unemployment positively frightening. If you can't tell your employer to f*ck off when they deserve it, they can run you ragged with nary a peep.

I still insists that advertising of consumer goods is straight-up capitalist propaganda that distorts our spending habits as individuals, especially in desiring quick-fix consumables and pushing us to pursue the latest and greatest products. If you could reasonably put $20 per week aside for a year to buy a new TV, or buy it now on credit, what seems like the better option? Consider also that the price of that same TV is likely to drop by a large percentage over the year. Does your old TV really need replacing if it works as well as it always has? As a society, we've become very discontent with having something formerly adequate simply because better is available. Moore's law and the associated acceleration of digital services has aggravated this in regards to personal electronics...  there becomes a point where one's old smartphone or PC simply starts to lack the processing power to keep up with the newest services and the data capacities required.

The ubiquity of value-added food products is also something I rally against in general (despite the fact that I do use a certain set of processed foods); while many of these foods are cheap in terms of calories, their market share reflects their profitability to producers, and therefore represent a poor value to consumers. Anything that needs to be heavily advertised in order to sell is probably a bad bargain in terms of health, taste and plain old economics; some of the money you spend on any advertised product is literally paying to push more ads in your face. Good-value foods don't generally need advertising.  When's the last time you saw an ad for a carrot?  Given the life-destroying costs of health care in the US, the wisest investment one can make in terms of dollars and sense is to eat a healthy diet of home-prepared whole foods.  The ability to do this depends on having the time to do so, which reduces one's income now, but is a good long-term bet.

Factoring that into the discussion of having two-earner families vs. going back to a homemaker-based family system (1 FT or 2 PT) is a game changer, IMHO.  I'm aware that I'm being biased towards 2-parent families here, which we've moved away from a bit as a society.

_{(disclaimer: I've done poorly with following my own advice on this lately, especially because my workplaces provide me with free or very cheap meals.  The Vietnamese restaurant is generally healthy food and freshly prepared, but pub food isn't so healthy, despite being mostly freshly prep'd in-house).}

Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on September 25, 2015, 10:04:42 PMThe 0.1% seem to suggest that you should work at least 16 hours a day, don't get sick, don't get children, don't get married and spend all of your income paying for your housing and education.

It's in their best interests to do so, and as long as people keep chasing the lifestyle promoted by that 0.1%, we're going to stay trapped on that treadmill.

The increase in individualism that has occurred over the past few generations leaves us prone to this, I think, as have some other cultural shifts. That lifestyle is so bleak and alienating that it leads people to seek quick and easy sources of satisfaction, which - not surprisingly - are most readily accomplished by buying all the things that advertising tells us will make us happy.  The move to individualized direct-to-your-screen advertising tailored to your demographic, geographical location and personal consumption habits, combined with advances in online shopping and logistics which allow instant wish gratification is IMHO a game-changer. We're about to see a whole new level of discretionary spending and associated consumer debt in the next decade. We need to spend most of our income on housing and education, but it's incredibly frustrating to restrict our spending to only those things, so we necessarily go into debt to fulfill our wants and feel like we have the ability to exert our will on the world around us.

It's a complex picture that can't be attributed to one thing, but it bears comparison to previous generations' standards of living.

Imagine going back to the living standards of the 50's - 60's, raising 2.5 children in a 1200 sq. ft. 3 bedroom house with one TV in the living room (with no cable fees), one phone, a parent around at least most of the time, no game console, kids playing unorganized games of imagination around the block with a couple of sticks, home-prepared meals and a single vehicle.  Is this a lesser standard of living? Yes, in many ways.  Is it an inadequate standard of living?

Now imagine a 4000 sq. ft. 4 bedroom 5 bathroom house where each of the 1.5 children have their own tablet/computer/phone, a TV in every large room, are bought enough consumer goods to be considered a major marketing category (tweens) despite having no earnings of their own. The parents arrive home with take-out or heat up some convenience food at the end of the work day in order to get the kids dropped off at soccer/baseball/piano/whatever practice on time; the kids probably already nuked something and ate it in their rooms. Is this a richer standard of living? Yes, undoubtedly.  Is it a better standard of living in terms of the mental and physical well-being of the family?

Heck, forget the kids. If you want to be able to travel, dine out at *good* restaurants, drive a sporty 2-door and drink decent wine, let alone afford that 4000 sq. ft. house, kids are too damned expensive.  It's also important to retire with enough savings to ensure you die with enough money to pass down to the next genera... oh, never mind.

Yeah, I'm trotting out some worn-out cliches here, and I'm not promoting a return to the cultural values of an earlier time, but I do want to point out that what many people consider an ideal standard of living has more to do with consumer culture and income-based status chasing than what's actually best for us as individuals.  Comparing the two scenarios, do you see any clues as to why debt levels have risen even more spectacularly than family incomes, and why most people are feeling ground down to the bone with their lifestyles?

More is not always better, and I'm intent on finding the minimum appropriate standard of living that satisfies me, with room for a few simple luxuries on top of that.

Quote from: Sibling Zono (anon1mat0) on September 25, 2015, 10:04:42 PMPeople don't go broke because they pay for cable or cellphones, but because they get sick or they lose their job/hours. In the meantime the banks are laughing all the way at all the debt they acquired while dangling cheese on poorly informed people.

I strongly agree that people are poorly informed in general, and there's a clear financial interest in keeping them that way.  While I agree that what pushes someone over the top into bankruptcy or inescapable debt tends to be due to major events, it's my opinion that learning to live a more modest lifestyle and resisting non-essential purchases allows one to stay out of debt during the normal course of events, and build up enough of a savings cushion to weather periodic crises without being financially annihilated. I'm of the 'every drop counts' school when it comes to spending, so while I have my little indulgences here and there, I'm dead serious about keeping my basic costs down and clawing back a few cents here and there on the normal course of living to afford those indulgences.

I don't think the service industry is as lucrative in most parts of the US (in fact, I've heard it's quite dismal), but I've gotten back into that industry segment largely because it offers the best trade-off I can find in terms of flexibility of hours, pay and employability. I have several friends who have created a very sustainable and comfortable standard of living serving tables, including a single mom with two children who works about 25 hours a week, owns her own home, accesses child care subsidies while still having friends* and family providing the care, and generally lives quite comfortably. This does depend on being able to access a number of low-income benefit programs that may not exist south of the border. 

_{*the non-traditional schedule of service work makes it possible to do some collective childcare swaps with other single-parent co-workers.}

I'm currently focusing on lowering my cost of living as much as possible, to allow me to live with a much lower gross income while still having the ability to save (hopefully - I'm in investment phase this year, and it'll take time to recoup some costs). This is possible largely because I'm single and childless at the moment, with enough of a cushion to live outside of my income at times. However, it's being undertaken with an eye to parenting and creating a lifestyle that allows me to NOT work 16 hour days or be shipped across the countryside to earn a living.  My sister has chosen to take a higher-income path with a more lavish lifestyle, so I consider it good niche diversification for the family line.   

I take the approach to life that I do because I've realized that the top 10% (or whatever) is very adept at working every legal and tax loophole they can to maximize their returns and minimize their outputs. I have no qualms about taking a similar approach to sidestepping the cultural norms that favour them, in exchange for a lifestyle that stacks the deck in my own favour. I've put enough money into the system over the years that I don't consider it freeloading (have never taken unemployment insurance, and probably never will). If they're setting the rules, it's my responsibility to know those rules and game the system to my advantage.

I wasn't aware of this, but it's a serious crime to criticize the Royal Family in Thailand.  By all accounts, this applies to some degrees outside of the country, especially if you're a media outlet:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A8se_majest%C3%A9_in_Thailand

So, we could probably get in shit for making fun of Prince Vajina Longhorn Vajiralongkorn.  




(wasn't sure whether to put this here or in Games & Jokes...  or maybe we should hide it to prevent Thai cyber-attacks.  )

We call this sort of buildup on trees "Snow Ghosts" if it's from regular snow, so I guess these are Ice Ghosts:
(click for story and more photos)

I'm a little peeved and a lot curious about why there seems to be a lot of emphasis in the media about missions focused on getting humans to Mars (and presumably back), such as Inspiration Mars (http://www.inspirationmars.org/) and Mars One (http://www.mars-one.com/).  The latter especially makes me a little irate, for one simple reason...  we haven't even attempted a lunar colony yet. I'm not saying that there is a good reason to set up human settlements on Luna, but wouldn't it make sense to start there if we're really interested in doing the same thing on Mars? 

Humans haven't really left Earth orbit to date, so other than the romance of the next great conquest, why do we think this will be a good use of resources and end in something other than tragedy? There still seem to be a heap of technological issues (especially with regards to cosmic radiation) that need to be overcome.

Note: I'm just parking a few articles here for the moment until I can comment on them, but feel free to discuss...

Interesting fact: The US is now the world's largest oil producer, eclipsing Saudi Arabia
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-dollar-sinks-below-88-cents-as-saudis-cut-oil-to-77-a-barrel-1.2822955
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/loonie-oil-prices-could-fall-much-further-don-pittis-1.2799880


http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21582516-worlds-thirst-oil-could-be-nearing-peak-bad-news-producers-excellent

Quote from: The Economist - The future of oil: Yesterday's fuel
The world's thirst for oil could be nearing a peak. That is bad news for producers, excellent for everyone else

THE dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18 (around $450 at today's prices). It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting after overfishing led to a shortage of whale blubber. Other liquids produced in the refining process, too unstable or smoky for lamplight, were burned or dumped. But the unwanted petrol and diesel did not go to waste for long, thanks to the development of the internal-combustion engine a few years later.

Since then demand for oil has, with a couple of blips in the 1970s and 1980s, risen steadily alongside ever-increasing travel by car, plane and ship. Three-fifths of it ends up in fuel tanks. With billions of Chinese and Indians growing richer and itching to get behind the wheel of a car, the big oil companies, the International Energy Agency (IEA) and America's Energy Information Administration all predict that demand will keep on rising. One of the oil giants, Britain's BP, reckons it will grow from 89m b/d now to 104m b/d by 2030.

Scraping the barrel

We believe that they are wrong, and that oil is close to a peak. This is not the "peak oil" widely discussed several years ago, when several theorists, who have since gone strangely quiet, reckoned that supply would flatten and then fall. We believe that demand, not supply, could decline. In the rich world oil demand has already peaked: it has fallen since 2005. Even allowing for all those new drivers in Beijing and Delhi, two revolutions in technology will dampen the world's thirst for the black stuff.

The first revolution was led by a Texan who has just died (see article). George Mitchell championed "fracking" as a way to release huge supplies of "unconventional" gas from shale beds. This, along with vast new discoveries of conventional gas, has recently helped increase the world's reserves from 50 to 200 years. In America, where thanks to Mr Mitchell shale gas already billows from the ground, liquefied or compressed gas is finding its way into the tanks of lorries, buses and local-delivery vehicles. Gas could also replace oil in ships, power stations, petrochemical plants and domestic and industrial heating systems, and thus displace a few million barrels of oil a day by 2020.

The other great change is in automotive technology. Rapid advances in engine and vehicle design also threaten oil's dominance. Foremost is the efficiency of the internal-combustion engine itself. Petrol and diesel engines are becoming ever more frugal. The materials used to make cars are getting lighter and stronger. The growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars, as well as vehicles powered by natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, will also have an effect on demand for oil. Analysts at Citi, a bank, calculate that if the fuel-efficiency of cars and trucks improves by an average of 2.5% a year it will be enough to constrain oil demand; they predict that a peak of less than 92m b/d will come in the next few years. Ricardo, a big automotive engineer, has come to a similar conclusion.

Not surprisingly, the oil "supermajors" and the IEA disagree. They point out that most of the emerging world has a long way to go before it owns as many cars, or drives as many miles per head, as America.

But it would be foolish to extrapolate from the rich world's past to booming Asia's future. The sort of environmental policies that are reducing the thirst for fuel in Europe and America by imposing ever-tougher fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles are also being adopted in the emerging economies. China recently introduced its own set of fuel-economy measures. If, as a result of its determination to reduce its dependence on imported oil, the regime imposes policies designed to "leapfrog" the country's transport system to hybrids, oil demand will come under even more pressure.

A fit of peak

A couple of countervailing factors could kick in to increase consumption. First, the Saudis, who control 11% of output and have the most spare capacity, may decide to push out more, lowering prices and thus increasing demand. Then again, they might cut production to try to raise prices, thereby lowering demand further. Second, if declining demand pushes down the oil price, drivers may turn back to gas-guzzling cars, as they did when oil was cheap in the 1990s. But tightening emissions standards should make that harder in future.

If the demand for oil merely stabilises, it will have important consequences. The environment should fare a little better. Gas vehicles emit less carbon dioxide than equivalent petrol-powered ones.

The corporate pecking order will change, too. Currently, Exxon Mobil vies with Apple as the world's biggest listed company. Yet Exxon and the other oil supermajors are more vulnerable than they look (see article). Bernstein, a research firm, reckons that new barrels of oil from the Arctic or other technologically (or politically) demanding environments now cost $100 to extract. Big Oil can still have a decent future as Big Gas, but that will not prove as profitable.

The biggest impact of declining demand could be geopolitical. Oil underpins Vladimir Putin's kleptocracy. The Kremlin will find it more difficult to impose its will on the country if its main source of patronage is diminished. The Saudi princes have relied on a high oil price to balance their budgets while paying for lavish social programmes to placate the restless young generation that has taken to the streets elsewhere. Their huge financial reserves can plug the gap for a while; but if the oil flows into the kingdom's coffers less readily, buying off the opposition will be harder and the chances of upheaval greater. And if America is heading towards shale-powered energy self-sufficiency, it is unlikely to be as indulgent in future towards the Arab allies it propped up in the past. In its rise, oil has fuelled many conflicts. It may continue to do so as it falls. For all that, most people will welcome the change.

Being a stubborn Canadian who hangs on to any cultural differences between us and our Big Brother to the south, I've steadfastly stuck to keeping the 'u' in words like colour and neighbour (and occasionally insert it in inappropriate places, like authour).  The infographic in the next post gives some details on how choices of fonts and spellings of words can have real-world implications, in aggregate.  It's the only argument I've seen for dropping the u that doesn't smack of pure laziness. 

Infographic to follow.

Stinking browser....  my startup screen (already geared for touchscreens) has morphed on me.  Nothing difficult to adjust to; but the little page-jump items have gone from a 3 x 3 grid to 2 x 8, and from square-cornered to round-cornered tablet-shaped lozenges.

I wish these almighty tech gods would figure out that there are multiple viewing platforms still out there, and also realize that some users like appearances to keep static; it'd be nice to be able to download a little add-on that would allow one to skin a current browser version with previous versions. In this case, I don't have a real preference between the two layouts, but am irked by the fact that it just suddenly changed, and that it's just assumed that my brain will re-wire in a couple of days (which it will).

Ditto for webmail platforms, and social media platforms.  I suppose it's a lot of needless programming, but I hate the forced-change aspect of continual upgrades.

Just finished the English translation of LoveStar by Andri Snær Magnason. 


It's one of the best novels I've read recently, possibly ever. It's a sci-fi love story set in a consumerist dystopia/utopia (depending on your perspective) in the near future, mostly in Iceland. It reminds me in some ways of 1984 or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, but it's more lighthearted and tongue-in-cheek than either, so maybe a bit of Douglas Adams as well.

It's one of those books that comments so keenly on the current state of society (especially user-targeted advertising on the Internet - which has become obsolete in the novel) that it's hard to imagine it was written in 2002 and not 2014.  Definitely ahead of its time, and recommended.

I will be adding this to my permanent library when possible.

Yaaaarrgh!  Go get ye some!
http://inhabitat.com/artist-buries-16k-worth-of-gold-bullion-that-people-can-find-and-keep/#more-684930

I just found out that a UK magazine has used some photos I took for an article on their website:

http://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/connemara-pony-makes-friends-with-a-young-bear/

Funny how everyday life is newsworthy. The local online press picked up the story at the time, although they interviewed my buddy, not the horse's owner, and at least gave me photo credit.  H&H put a different spin on things, because the horse was definitely not being friendly with the bear... it wasn't afraid but was giving it the run-around and chasing it up trees.

Nice rework of a Beastie Boys song. Yeah, it's a commercial, but it's pretty awesome.

[youtube=425,350]UFpe3Up9T_g[/youtube]

Lyrics:

Girls.
You think you know what we want, girls.
Pink and pretty it's girls.
Just like the 50's it's girls.

You like to buy us pink toys
and everything else is for boys
and you can always get us dolls
and we'll grow up like them... false.

It's time to change.
We deserve to see a range.
'Cause all our toys look just the same
and we would like to use our brains.

We are all more than princess maids.

Girls to build the spaceship,
Girls to code the new app,
Girls to grow up knowing
they can engineer that.

Girls.
That's all we really need is Girls.
To bring us up to speed it's Girls.
Our opportunity is Girls.
Don't underestimate Girls.

Posted a Red Green video in another thread, and realized that we don't have a designated place for what's considered funny in our home countries.  (I think that British humour has pretty good exposure here, but more is of course welcome.)

It might be interesting to see what humour travels well, and what doesn't.


I'll kick it off with some up-and-coming Canadian humour (NSFW due to language):
[youtube=425,350]_KLSbCtinXs[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]ozDDYcyrCNE[/youtube]

I've seen this reported on in a similar fashion before (in the Economist) and have felt like a conspiracy nut by continuously referring to it, but here's another article that asserts that the ultimate goal of gender equality in the workforce is to boost economic growth:
http://www.4-traders.com/FACEBOOK-INC-10547141/news/Facebook-Inc--IMF-warns-of-slow-progress-achieving-gender-equality-17290088/

This literally means that global investors are keenly interested in getting women into the workforce instead of leaving a parent at home to actually parent their children (IMHO, a second income should be a luxury, not a necessity, when raising a family, and parents should be able to either choose who cares for the children, or should be able to both work reduced hours in order to switch off). There is a direct return-on-investment for making 2-income families the norm in every available demographic, provided that one in invested in a developing nation with few women in the salaried workforce.

This gives me mixed feelings. I support full gender equality, but feel like it's been completely co-opted for something that doesn't care whatsoever if it's  a net positive for the women in question, provided it pads out the bottom line. I feel that there needs to be a discussion about how two-income families transitioned from an option to a necessity in the West, and whether that was an inevitable transition. I don't feel that it's right to intentionally export that way of life before we have been able to see what the long-term societal consequences are. On the other hand, economic development leads to increased standards of living (in theory), so getting more humans into the workforce should help increase the welfare of a nation by bringing in more funds from outside (via export) and recirculating them via consumerism. Giving women equal economic standing is a desirable end, but putting heavy constraints on the choice of whether or not to have a career or rear children for either gender is IMHO a highly undesirable result.

The corollary to this is the implication that reducing the total work-hours-per-breeding-unit would reduce economic growth in developed nations, which means that any measures to re-instate the single income family as a viable living strategy would be contrary to the goals of the invested, and should be actively discouraged. Likewise any form of income support (such as Employment Insurance*) is to be restricted and regulated as much as possible to keep people from living a life outside of work. 

<sub>*which I've paid into for years and will probably never see a damned dime of unless I intentionally cheat the system, because I can get work easily and will be unlikely to be out of a job short of the next Great Depression. I'd rather take a shit job than collect unemployment under the pretense that I can't get work. If I'm unemployed or underemployed at this point, it's by choice and I don't expect a free ride; I can carve one out myself without the government. I'd rather see someone else get a break from the system. There are some places where the work is seasonal and it's tough to stay flush year-round; if those areas and industries are considered important, then some way of supporting them is fine with me.

I'm far more likely to end up on disability following an accident than to be honestly unemployed long enough to collect pogie; needless to say, I disapprove of any cuts or restrictions to disability, which is already very meagre. Work for most people is easier than just staying alive and functional is for a relatively small number of others, so why begrudge those that are struggling? I want to live in a country where I can depend on society to soften the blow if I fall down hard.</sub>

http://www.kongregate.com/games/Avaloid4JoyBits/doodle-devil
Combine 2 initial elements to create over 100 synthesis of...  evil! 

The first reaction is Human + Apple to create Sin and Knowledge. 

http://inhabitat.com/tesla-repays-its-entire-department-of-energy-loan-nine-years-early/

QuoteTesla Motors just announced that it has repaid the entire $465 million loan that it received from the Department of Energy a full nine years early. The development makes Tesla the only US car company in history to have fully repaid loans received from the government.

Pretty good job, for an electric vehicle maker. It points towards a promising future for the electric vehicle, although I doubt we'll see the demise of the combustion engine any time soon.

Quoted from an email I recently received....

Columbia River: Hanford Nuclear Waste Tank is Leaking

A major issue has surfaced today that could impact a major salmon run and the Columbia River Watershed which the Okanagan is part of. Today the Governor of Washington State told the public that nuclear waste is leaking from the Hanford nuclear storage site in eastern Washington, south of the Okanagan Valley. This is a significant international incident because the Columbia River is within an international treaty that includes Canada, First Nations and the US. I'm requesting that you forward this email to as many people as possible. Currently, the tank is leaking in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers. Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge says, "We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now - we've got a problem. This is big."



The article below describes this situation, which has yet to capture the attention of governments in Canada. It's important that we all educate ourselves about Hanford, which represents one of the most seriously contaminated areas on Earth and one that's very close to the Okanagan and Kootenay.



Learn about Hanford:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanford_Site



Connect with Hanford Challenge a Watchdog Group:

http://www.hanfordchallenge.org/



Today's News:

Tank at Hanford nuclear storage site in Wash. is leaking but higher radiation not detected

By Associated Press, Updated: Friday, February 15, 3:23 PM

OLYMPIA, Wash. — The long-delayed cleanup of the nation's most contaminated nuclear site became the subject of more bad news Friday, when Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced that a radioactive waste tank there is leaking.

The news raises concerns about the integrity of similar tanks at south-central Washington's Hanford nuclear reservation and puts added pressure on the federal government to resolve construction problems with the plant being built to alleviate environmental and safety risks from the waste.

The tanks, which are already long past their intended 20-year life span, hold millions of gallons of a highly radioactive stew left from decades of plutonium production for nuclear weapons.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Energy said liquid levels are decreasing in one of 177 underground tanks at the site. Monitoring wells near the tank have not detected higher radiation levels, but Inslee said the leak could be in the range of 150 gallons to 300 gallons over the course of a year and poses a potential long-term threat to groundwater and rivers.

"I am alarmed about this on many levels," Inslee said at a news conference. "This raises concerns, not only about the existing leak ... but also concerning the integrity of the other single shell tanks of this age."

Inslee said the state was assured years ago that such problems had been dealt with and he warned that spending cuts — particularly due to a budget fight in Congress — would create further risks at Hanford. Inslee said the cleanup must be a priority for the federal government.

"We are willing to exercise our rights using the legal system at the appropriate time. That should be clear," Inslee said.

Inslee said the state has a good partner in Energy Secretary Steven Chu but that he's concerned about whether Congress is committed to clean up the highly contaminated site.

The tank in question contains about 447,000 gallons of sludge, a mixture of solids and liquids with a mud-like consistency. The tank, built in the 1940s, is known to have leaked in the past, but was stabilized in 1995 when all liquids that could be pumped out of it were removed.

Inslee said the tank is the first to have been documented to be losing liquids since all Hanford tanks were stabilized in 2005. His staff said the federal government is working to assess other tanks.

At the height of World War II, the federal government created Hanford in the remote sagebrush of eastern Washington as part of a hush-hush project to build the atomic bomb. The site ultimately produced plutonium for the world's first atomic blast and for one of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, effectively ending the war.

Plutonium production continued there through the Cold War. Today, Hanford is the nation's most contaminated nuclear site. Cleanup will cost billions of dollars and last decades.

Central to that cleanup is the removal of millions of gallons of a highly toxic, radioactive stew — enough to fill dozens of Olympic-size swimming pools — from 177 aging, underground tanks. Many of those tanks have leaked over time — an estimated 1 million gallons of waste — threatening the groundwater and the neighboring Columbia River, the largest waterway in the Pacific Northwest.

Twenty- eight of those tanks have double walls, allowing the Energy Department to pump waste from leaking single-shell tanks into them. However, there is very little space left in those double-shell tanks today.

In addition, construction of a $12.3 billion plant to convert the waste to a safe, stable form is years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Technical problems have slowed the project, and several workers have filed lawsuits in recent months, claiming they were retaliated against for raising concerns about the plant's design and safety.

"We're out of time, obviously. These tanks are starting to fail now," said Tom Carpenter of the Hanford watchdog group Hanford Challenge. "We've got a problem. This is big."

Inslee said he would be traveling to Washington D.C. next week to discuss the problem further.

Damnit GOP, quit teaching the Conservatives new tricks! 
The article's 2 years old; Sun TV is here already.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/lawrence-martin/is-stephen-harper-set-to-move-against-the-crtc/article1677632/