October ends

Here's a picture of the hounds that I walked today.

It was cold and crisp and bright. Summer is gone for sure.

I've been really busy working on my new blog - It had over 850 hits on it's first real day.

What have I done?

cola + mentos domino effect

This is wacky, with catchy music to boot.

cleaner air?...Beta 2.0

In an earlier post here I wrote about the (neo)Conservatives' "Green Plan" (makes me green around the gills).

Yesterday I stumbled upon this blog - Far and Wide (a good read), and was led to Progressive Bloggers, where I found this countdown clock to cleaner air.


"Lord Kitchener's Own" wrote;

I wonder what the internet will be like, far in the future, when the clock hits 0.

Of course, I also wonder what the WORLD will be like in 2050 when the Conservatives hit their target of 50% reductions in Greenhouse Gas emmissions.

I hope we still have Polar Bears!

I'll only be 75, so I should make it and see.

I'm not sure if I'll live long enough to see them raise PEI back out of the ocean again, though. One can always hope!

My only criticism of this clock is that it is actually 16,060 days until the target is reached (Edit - Steve V from Far and Wide commented that the clock was keyed to smog and ozone, and that the emissions targets are for 2050. My apologies for any misrepresentation.), and as LKO says ...After 44 years of unquestioned Tory rule, I'd imagine it'll be a very different place indeed.


Indeed.

You can get the code for this counter @ Progressive Bloggers if you want to put it on your own blog or web page (I believe that Steve V wrote the code).

James Lovelock (the author of the Gaia Hypothesis) wikipedia link predicted that by 2100 there would be only 200,000,000 people surviving on this planet - concentrated above the Arctic Circle. 6.1 billion people will have starved, drowned, or been stricken by emerging diseases. This prediction is only 94 years away from fruition (?), and as we prepare for the birth of a child in February, I wonder what hell we are bringing this child into. My old Grandma always said to me to "get some land where you can grow some food", and I believe her prescience was accurate. The thing is though, it will be hard to defend that food against 6.1 billion starving people.

I have always thought that there have been 5 great civilizations of mankind on Earth (the present one being the fifth - the fourth was the Atlantean civilization), and that there will be another "cleansing". The sick part of it is that our greed and rapaciousness will be our own undoing, and the undoing of the innocents not yet born.

Man, I hate Mondays.

dark freesia

sea anenomes

taken at Long Beach, Vancouver Island

tangled web blog

Badajoz at dawn
photo by author

Web.
Blog.
Blog on Web.
Web on Blog on Web.

When I started this blog, I was not sure where it would go, or what it would turn into. I wanted it to be organic, and to evolve naturally. Looking back over the past month, I recognize that it is becoming a tangled web, dripping with dew, and catching nothing.

I am all over the place - politics, paintings, photo's, (un)real estate, ponderings upon ponderings as I wonder at the feast that is my life. Thus, I think that I will set up at least one more blog, and separate the ideas. People interested in my (un)real estate views are not necessarilly interested in my cat, or my alarm clock, etc., and those interested in morphs between photo's and paintings are not necessarily interested in politics.

Bear with me while I sort it out, and I will provide links to what you are looking for.
Edit - the link to vancouver (un)real estate is now in the sidebar.

Get the mad off the streets

elderly man on the streets of Lisbon
photo by author


I heard on CBC radio yesterday that the Campbell government sees the need to start helping out the mentally ill by reinstitutionalizing them, and increasing shelter benefits for those on Social Assistance. At first blush, it seems like a good thing, and I was surprised that this government was giving the issue attention (link to online story) - it was, after all, this government that slashed tens of millions of dollars from the budgets of Riverview Hospital, and other facilities for the mentally ill (edit - it was not actually this government - a lot of those funding cuts happened before this gov't came to power). Many of these afflicted psychiatric patients ended up on the streets, where they are helpless, and prey for all kinds of predators. The shelter allowance for those on social assistance has been $325/month since 1994. Meanwhile, the cost of housing has more than doubled, and many of the SRO (single resident occupancy) hotels have been shut down and torn down (the land is too valuable), or converted to boutique hotels, or condos.

So, I am a slightly cynical person (rendered so by the cynicism of governments at large), and as the day wore on, I continued to wonder at the sudden (and uncharacteristic) philanthropy of the Campell "Liberals". First thought to mind was that there is a desire to hide the homeless problem in Vancouver in readiness to show a good face for the 2010 Winter Olympics (I still have to publish my rant about the Olympics) - that is what was done in the run-up to Expo '86. Then I began to wonder if homelessness would become evidence (to the government) of mental illness - why would anyone be indigent in this booming economy? Perhaps a sinister new version of vagrancy legislation. Round them up, and lock them up for the duration of the world's focus on Vancouver.

I can't remember who was attributed as saying that the measure of a society is how it takes care of it's elderly, sick and downtrodden, but by that measure, this society is failing (and has failed) miserably. Cynical laws such as the Safe Streets Act - which basically makes it illegal to ask for money on the streets, and enables police to jail those who are fined and cannot pay the fine. What a choice to make (for the indigent) - beg for money, or starve. Receive a fine (up to $2,000!) for begging, and either beg for the money to pay the fine (and receive another fine), or be imprisoned. Now there will be a new tool - you must be mentally ill, so off to Riverview - and you will never get out of there until the government slashes the funding again, and you will again be on the streets.

Qu'elle vie.

A story on poverty at The Republic

Safe Streets Act links;

Tyee article
SFU Peak article
Vancouver Courier article

Edit;

The Safe Streets Act specifically stated that there was to be no pan-handling in front of liquor stores, banks and pay phones. Tonight I stopped to get some fermented grape juice, and there were 4 young lads collecting money (pan-handling) in front of the liquor store. If I was really mean-spirited (like the "Liberals" are), I would have called the police to complain about it.

"Black-Box" Voting

So, we know that there were "irregularities" in the last couple of Presidential elections in the US. In 2000 Bush "beat" Gore to take the election. There were extreme irregularities, in Florida specifically, with "African-Americans" (were they born in Africa?, or is that just a politically correct way of saying black, coloured, Negro, nig.....?). Many non-Caucasians there were denied a vote because they were falsely listed as felons (there is a world of information out there about who was responsible for that...). Then there were the "hanging chads", "dimpled chads", etc., the absentee votes that were never counted, the recount stopped by the Supreme Court, and Gore's concession to Bush (how many of you know that they are actually cousins? That's another story though...).

In 2004, there was another huge mess, and obvious "fixing" of the results in Ohio and New Mexico that led to Bush "winning" by a spurious number of votes.People were forced to wait in line (in the rain) for hours to vote, and then saw their vote for anyone other than Bush magically register in front of their eyes to be a vote for Bush. Exit polls indicated a clear win for the Democrats, but for the first time in history, anywhere, they were wrong. Another stolen election.

There is a mountain of information regarding all of this, but everyone has forgotten - distracted by wars, nukes, public servant scandals, plasma tv's, real estate bubbles, and so on. I fully expect the 2008 elections to the South to be suspended because the country is "at war", and it is perfectly "legal" to do so. The only hope for our American cousins is to impeach those lunatics before they have the chance to do that. Bush keeps repeating that America is at war - to drill it into people's heads. It is a "war" that will never end, because the "enemy" is a ghost. It's different ideas at war, not different countries. It's an invasion of people's minds - besides actual lands. It's psychological/ideological warfare.

I have been warning against "black hole" voting in Canada for quite some time, and am very concerned about it. Harper is a Bush sycophant (psychophant), and is bound to take a page from that book to make voting in Canada even more irrelevent, and when that day comes, we will have to refuse it, and demand paper ballots.

Below you will find two links to the recent "black hole" voting experience in municipal elections in Quebec. In one riding there was a vote that defied 130 years of history. And guess who provided the voting machines? If you guessed Diebold, you would be correct.

Watch out for this kind of travesty in your riding.

wired.com on black-box voting

Macleans on black-box voting in Quebec

Video by an organization of American citizens to "Video the Vote" in the upcoming Congressional/Senatorial elections in the US of A.

morphin'e .5

This is another "morph" that I created using a photograph of myself, and morphin' to a self-portrait that I painted.

80 years in a plymouth

This is a 4 second morph I did from two photo's of my Grandmother.

The first photo was taken around 1921 with Grandma in front of her first car - a 1920 Plymouth.
The second photo was taken around her 100th birthday in front of a 2001 Chrysler (Plymouth) that I rented while visiting her.

My Grandparents never owned anything but Plymouth/Chryslers. Hence the name of the vid. ...

ice floe

click on image for larger view

This is a picture that I took of my Grandma on her 102nd birthday. We decided that it was time to cut 'er loose, and in the tradition of the Eskimos, set her on this ice floe to drift off to her maker.

Ah, I'm just leading you on. It really is a picture of Grandma on her 102nd birthday, but the picture was taken in the garden of the nursing home where she spent the last six months of her life. I "Photoshopped" her onto the ice floe because when I signed the papers for her admission to extended care, I felt that I was setting her on an unstable piece of ice in the Arctic. And, I'm an artist...

Goos the water lovin' cat

Here's the video of Goos chasing water that I promised.

This goofy little white cat loves water. She comes running whenever I water the garden, brush my teeth, wash my face, have a shower...

Enjoy

call to prayer

I bought this alarm clock in Abu Dhabi while I was working there. It plays a tinny rendition of the call to prayer that I just love. J hates it though, so I keep it in my office.

I loved the call to prayer (live) while I was there. It is a beautiful sound floating across the steaming air - especially at dawn, and dusk. It left me feeling that I was in Casa Blanca, or Lawrence of Arabia or such.

2:56 of electronic caterwauling will ensue when you hit the play button.

Enjoy.

Vancouver Unreal Estate 2.1

I lifted this from Vancouver Housing Market Blog.

It illustrates what can be bought for $499G's in Ottawa, and $499G's in Vancouver.

The weather here isn't that fantastic, and I don't ski. So what's the big deal with Vancouver anyhow?

Garth Turner

image from the Burlington Post Oct. 20, 2006


I posted the following at Garth Turner's blog (link at sidebar). Although I am as cynical about government as the next person, I cannot ignore it and pretend that it has nothing to do with me.

I have never belonged to any political party, (and likely never will), never voted for a Party, but always have voted for someone that reflects my own values. Federally, I have voted for the Reform Party, Progressive Conservatives (remember Joe Clark?), NDP, and Canadian Action Party. Politically, our country is in a mess, with few decent people representing us. I have never known what to think of Garth Turner, but I am glad that this tempest in a tea-house has blown in.

I await, with bated breath, the outcome of this. We are at a critical point in our history, and the future of Canada is up in the air.

Seriously Garth,

I hope that you don’t join the Green Party - they don’t need you.

I have suggested the Canadian Action Party, and I see that they have been here making the same suggestion.

We need change in a very big way - this is not about “Stevie” Harper, it’s about our country, our National identity, and our sovereignty. We have been sold out in increments since Mouldroney and NAFTA - at least. Connie Fogal (leader of the CAP) is the widow of Harry Rankin - a great man. Ms. Fogal was instrumental in revealing the MAI to Canadians, and was the impetus that stopped that travesty. Take a look at their philosophy, and I think that you will see that it is a good fit for you. They may seem at first to be socialist, or wingy, but it is Canadians at-large that interest them the most.

Canada is slipping into the same corporate fascism that the US is dying under. Harper seems to be bent on the same “Deep Integration” that Martin and Cretin (sic) worked towards.

The fact is that the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party are as about as different as the Repugnants and Dumbocrats are in the US. It’s all about money and power, and The People be damned.

The hegemonic, fascist, kleptocratic doctrines that have become so entrenched in Western governments have made us all poorer in every way. We are ripe for a revolution of thought. This (present, and failing) government that we have is hopefully the shake to awake us from our slumber.

What we need is men (and women) like you - who will speak for common sense, and stop playing popularity games to hood-wink the populace and maintain power and entitlement. We need coalition governments of independants.

I welcomed minority government for the last two elections, and hope that we never see a majority again. Let’s rid ourselves of the personality cults, scribes and pharisees. There are too many diseased minds throughout our political spectrum.

I hope that Harpercrit gets toasted soon, and that the Liberals do not select Ignatieff as their leader (but Rae has too much baggage, and is just another pharisee). We need people like Ed Broadbent (so sad to see him go), Alexa McDonough, Connie Fogal, Garth Turner, hell, even Trudeau - Canadians who are Canadians, and want to stay that way.

No more secret conclaves of oil barons and military psychopaths in Banff.

Please look at the Canadian Action Party at least. Give Connie a call (if she hasn’t called you yet), and hear her out.

still smokin'

click on image to enlarge

This is an e-mail that I sent to my friend Rags, who had a great blues band named First Thing Smokin'. He also did an ongoing poetry thang called Skin Up with Kari, which was recorded by Danny at Dubvibe Productions. Very cool too. Someday I will get some cuts up here, or on my website.

Hola mi Amigo, mi hermano,

Como as estado? Ooops, wrong amigo - you can read Engrish...

This beautiful flyer for junk food came in the junk-mail with the Courier, and when I espied it, it reminded me of First Thing Smokin' being ripped off by the Village People - what with all the fruity lookin' "firemen" and all.

So I scanned it for your amusement, and then for my amusement, photoshopped some dogshit onto the plate. Mmm-mmm good. They sure do look happy and hungry, and how about those fries?

I wonder what happened to the Dalmatian - it's missing.

I am now looking for a Korean fast-food flier that features spotted dog and kimchi.

Stay cool mi hermano,

K

clean air?

Great - the Conservatives have come up with a clean air act that will reduce emissions to "45%-65%" of 2003 levels by 2050. Never mind that the earth is melting, that cancer is more and more prevalent - as is asthma, COPD (Coronary Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), plants are choking and going chlorotic, etc., etc.

It is telling that Rona Ambrose is the daughter of an oil executive. We now have the same problem with our government as the Americans do with theirs (vis-a-vis the environment), in that the fox is in charge of the hen house. The Conservatives have also said that the economy is more important than the air we breathe. The proposed regulations will not be enforced if they "hurt the economy".

Rona Ambrose is a piece of work. She is scary. Where the hell did they pull her from? The Sydney Tar Ponds link? She is just making crap up. Example:

OTTAWA -- Environment Minister Rona Ambrose is under fire for statements to a committee that appear to have been inaccurate.

Sun Media has learned that costing figures cited by Ambrose during testimony to the environment and sustainable-development committee don't match estimates offered by the purported source.

Ambrose told the committee last week that electricity costs would rise 65% in Ontario and 40% in British Columbia if Canada tried to meet its Kyoto protocol commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 6%.

When asked where the numbers came from, officials in Ambrose's office said they were extrapolated from a study by M.K. Jaccard and Associates in Vancouver.


The company's general manager Chris Bataille said Ambrose's projections for the electricity figures don't match the company's analysis.

"Looking at our latest calculations, they should be more like 26% for B.C. and 32% for Ontario," Bataille wrote in an e-mail. Minister's Kyoto figures questioned -Toronto Sun

She (Ambrose) trotted out some pie-in-the-sky ideas such as Transit Pass Tax Credit - which, it was claimed, would take 56,000 cars off the road every day. That is assuming that people will get out of their cars, and use the woefully inadequate (in Vancouver, anyhow) public transit systems. The tax credit will only really benefit those who already use public transit.

“Just based on the ridership that we have today in Canada, the transit pass tax credit alone is the equivalent of taking 56,000 cars off the road, every day,” Ambrose said. “That’s a lot of greenhouse gases.”

Michael Roschlau, president and chief executive of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, said he was mystified as to where Ambrose was getting her numbers.

“I’m not familiar with those figures,” Roschlau said. “They certainly didn’t come from us. We have no way of measuring that at this point.”link

The Conservatives have put forward the idea of a 15% tax credit on a monthly transit pass costing $80 ($12/month). For the projected 56,000 drivers leaving their cars for public transit, that adds up to $672,000/month, or $8,064,000 per year. If every household in Canada changed just one 60w incandescent light bulb for a 20w compact fluorescent bulb, it would save the equivalent of 64,000 cars off the road.

I think that it would be more effective to subsidize the lightbulbs.

Vancouver Unreal Estate 2.0

This is the house next door to me. It was bought sight-unseen for $450,000 in April 2006 (the house was intact then). It went on the market again right away at $550,000. A few people looked at it and walked away.

In July it was reduced to $539,000, then to $499,000. Finally, the guy that bought it decided to tear it down, and build a new place. It has a great view (over the laneway, and the house behind it) of the city, and the North Shore mountains.

Now here is what you can get in the South-East of France for the same money.link

Vancouver Unreal Estate

Vancouver or France?

A sickening comparison between two houses priced roughly the same (the French Chateau being $109 less!...).

This was posted by 'exvancouverite' over at the Vancouver Housing Market Blog, and again at Vancouver Condo Info, and it gives a shocking comparison between house "values" in Vancouver and (in this case) France.

Here's the (West Side) of Vancouver house: $1,280,000 link




and here's the French "house": 899,000 Euros ($1,279,891 CAD)link



The Vancouver house is sitting on a 40'x~120' lot, while the French lot is over 1 acre...

If I had the $1.3 million to drop on a place, I would opt for the French place without more than .25/second of thought.

Which would you go for?

It should be noted that the Winter Olympics will not be hosted in the beautiful Loire valley in France, while the 2010 Winter Olympics will be hosted ~ 3 hours (by road) away from the Vancouver pad.

Ahh, now I see it - the Olympics have added huge value to the Vancouver pad because they might be able to rent the spare room out to Olympic visitors for $200/night.

I will be posting other such comparisons in the coming days, and will also be posting a rant about the 2010 Winter Olympics (if I can ever compose myself from my frothing lividity), so check back soon.

El Nino

El Nino is supposed to affect us this winter, with warmer, drier weather. I like that kind of weather, but it is delusional to hope for it. We depend too much on the rain. This is, after all a rainforest, and we need more vegetation, and less fires.

September 21st is officially the last day of summer, but summer held until this past weekend - when we had real rain for the first time in months, and the daytime temperatures dropped from 20C to 12/13C. Just as well really, as we needed rain, and will need it over the winter to replenish the snow pack - else we stand to have water problems next summer. It's pretty good though, it is the weather that kept me here - cloudy with light rain in the morning, then sunshine in the afternoon, and then maybe rain at night.

I do welcome El Nino home none the less.