Iran's moral case

I rarely judge other counties as I am a firm believer in self-determination of nations. However I feel let down by Iran, even disappointed. Iran was a country bold enough to lecture the USA on principles and morality. Rigged elections places Iran firmly in the "immoral by one's own standards" camp. No longer a respectable international voice.

Having elections and rigging the result -- bad form. Just a bunch of petty despots using religion to maintain power.

Dishonest in elections, dishonest in everything ... I say.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Bread'n Roses

I took this picture last summer in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia. A bed'n breakfast called Bread and Roses Country Inn. It just sorta reminded me of PB. This house is just a couple of blocks away from PMS Studio. Annapolis is rather an interesting town.



.Recommend to those in the know.

Water Power

Back from Nova Scotia. This is a picture of the stream I have high hopes will provide one-third of the Retreat's electricity.



.Recommend to those in the know.

Out of Afghanistan, Now

Calgary, 2009, April, 04. Peace demonstration. Get out of Afghanistan, now!

.Recommend to those in the know.

Calgary bans trans fat ban

Trans fats now allowed in Calgary. A whole lot of people who are purported to represent our health interests should lose their ridiculously high paying jobs ... including the Alberta Minister of Health, Ron Liepert. I am disgusted!

.Recommend to those in the know.

Posts I would have made

Too much work; too much school work. No time for any of my trademark unique postings. But .. must .. post ..
So just some running headlines so you know I strut an alternate swagger:

• I have nothing against the Taliban;
  
  
• Polygamy (polygyny), maybe, especially with polyandry.
  
  Al Capone was done in by tax law not murder conviction. Do in the polygamists with child custody and property settlement provisions. For the record, I do not oppose polygamy ;
  
  
• Tax shifting, not debt creation.
  
  Tough times, I know, but personally I'm holding onto my savings not driving up personal debt. Tax shifting would be an investment in the future. And let GM go bust ... then buy up the Canadian assets for penny on the dollar and create a Canadian car company or two;
  
  
• Always a "fund the consumer of health care, not the supplier" supporter;
  
  
• I consider myself Green but the party is currently too militaristic and health orthodox;
  
  
• I do so dislike first world patriarchy. Should massively fund progressive, reformist third-world countries and forget about us "teaching" the world. Good examples always lead;
  
  
• One state, one person, one vote Israeli solution. Support one religiously bigoted state and soon everybody will want one;
  
  
• I support proportional representation for Canada.
  

Sorry for drive-by posting. Frustrates me, too. Gotta run.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Battlestar

I am sitting on 4, season four Battlestar Galactica DVDs. No time to watch them. The temptation is driving me crazy. Someday, I'll get to them.

This three-year acupuncture program is tough. OK, back to studying for mid-terms.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Patient health records

Oh, la-de-da, a health group finally says patients should have access to their health records. Well, duh!

I have been belaboring that for years.

Long past time to make health care responsive to consumers.

(Oh, gotta stop this. More mid-terms!!)

.Recommend to those in the know.

Bank of Montreal anger

I posted before about how infuriating it is to deal with the Bank of Montreal. I have since closed all of my accounts with them. Still, however, I have two business Mastercards. And that continually drives me crazy, too! The statements either do not arrive or they arrive late.

Today, for example, February 10th. Statement arrives by mail. It is postmarked February 6th. It was printed (they say) on January 28th. My bill is due Feb14! The buggers!

Is this a deliberate ploy to maximize interest penalties?

I think Royal Bank credit cards are in order.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Cell Phone Cooking 2

Alright. I'll bite, again. My Cell Phone Cooking first post has provided hilarity throughout the blogosphere. Cooking an egg by cell phone .... hoax. Still one of my highest hit pages! Linked-to by joke pages around the world.

Now a second cell phone cooking posting. This time popcorn!
Check out popcorn cooking by cell phone.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Stampede

And, just like Afghanistan, Canadians stampede toward debt. This time it is who can brag the biggest debt.

Again, we are being manipulated to a course of action not in our best interests.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Balanced Budget

Is no political party going to argue in favour of a balanced budget?
Are pundits frozen into the position of seeing who can buy the most votes?
Politicians are scrambling to save their own jobs?
People are looking to see their mutual funds restored at tax payers expense?

Balanced budget. Tax shifting. That is my position. If the ideology is good then one should believe in it ... and practice it.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Facebook

No time for postings. I would truly like to toss in a post or two on polygamy since the arrest of the two Morman-sect polygamists (one was not a polygamist but just a PIG ... should be a law) and the killing of a senior level Hamas leader with his four wives. But no time, really.

I have to content myself with an occasional one line update in Facebook.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Back to School

Back to school tomorrow.

Will not have time to make any postings. I do so dislike seeing low (or NO) postings in a month but there is nothing for it.

School is SO difficult. I'm wondering how the youngsters manage to get through it at all. I find that I have zero time ... and every diversion simply sets me back further. How do the youngsters do it when they seem to be perpetually diverted by one thing or another. Must be a serious lack of brain-power on my part.

Of course I won't really miss being exposed to the many spleen-venting, personal-attack blogs out there -- even some Green ones.

One serious drawback (for me) of going back to school is the suspension of my activities to keep the various divisions of the Green Party green. I cannot continue to preserve dilution of Green values in the face of a swelling membership of people from other parties: can't work toward Peace behaviour; can't promote community emphasis in ideology; and can't stress cultural aspects of society. I have to let it all go as Green drifts toward politically expedient vanilla.

In the last federal election I never even picked my head up from the text books. Really feel guilty for not helping the election team out. And the nest-fouling behaviour of some Greens here in Alberta ... don't really feel guilty about turning my back on that!

Oh well, no matter what I do I have no doubt that the world will continue to turn. Politics can consume a person. Guess that is why I retreat into the Health realm ... working to break the medico monopoly, bring choice and empowerment to people, and imagining I'm accomplishing something.

.Recommend to those in the know.

I can write!

我 住 在 加 拿 大。

Hey! I discovered how to write chinese characters. Still, my vocab only allows for a couple of sentences. Gotta work on it a bit more.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Learning Mandarin

This learning Mandarin thing is kinda fun. My vocabulary is still very, very basic. Just for fun I troll for Chinese blogs in the hope that I might be able to read something. Not yet, really. A few pronouns, connectives'n stuff. Never a full sentence.

各位亲爱的博友~
不管你是走过,飘过,经过,路过...希望你留下你的部落格名字和url(可以的话也留下你的email).请按这里
非常感谢你们!
*其实也是为了方便我link你们~谢谢哦!

This looked sort of simple but still can identify only one in ten'ish. To me it is:

ming ? ? ? de ? you
bu ? ni shi ?, ? ?, ? ?, ? ?...? ? ni ? ? ne de ? ? ? ming zi ? url(? ? de ? ? ? ? ni de email).? ? ? ?
? ? ? ? ni ?!
* ? ? ? shi ? ? ? ? wo link ni ? ~ ? ? ?!

Not really a fun read for me, yet. "Friend" to me is "peng you" but I guess "friends" is different. Or it could be that Mandarin is not quite what is written in Malaysia (the locale I discover after the fact). Anyway, Google translator made sense of it:

Bo Dear Friends ~
Whether you come, drifting away, after passing through ... I hope you leave your blog name and url (you can also leave your email). Please click here
Thank you very much!
* In fact, in order to facilitate the link you ~ Thank you, I Oh!

A bit of a stretch from the words I know: good morning, come in, see you, where do you live, etc. Another three months of effort and then we'll see.

Update: Hmm, might take longer than three more months.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Year-End Wish List

Here is my wish list:

1) Bring the troops home, now!
Warmongering and establishing Vichy governments is not really the Canadian way.

2) Immigration designed around extending family instead of economics. My priorities tend to arts, sports, family, and culture. Sorry to all you stock market freakezoids.

3) It's the Environment, stupid. I hear there is a good deal on picking up some heavy manufacturing facilities in Ontario. Some urban utility vehicles and wind turbines made in Canada might be nice. Gotta end NAFTA.

4) The coalition should demand proportional representation ... if nothing else.

5) An end to sexism in child custody ... that alone should eliminate the gender gap.

6) And, of course, a world blockade of Israel.

Happy New Year.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Woken Up

I was woken up at 2:00 AM by city crews removing snow from the road under my bedroom window. Loud, repetitive, forthing and unforthing ... how can they clean up the city when they have to go back and forth so many times?

Eventually I gave up on trying to sleep. I went onto the little balcony in my shorts and watched them work. Then I said to myself, "why not make a little recording of their efforts?" So i did.

I really have no idea how to put a video on the internet. YouTube, maybe? Instead, I thought I'd make a little project of it. I made three movie files: a flash file, an MPEG file and a WMV file.

The flash file was 1.57 MB and crappy quality, so I deleted it.

The MPEG came out huge at 68 MB! A tad big. So I deleted it.

I made the WMV and it was a mere 18.8 MB for the 37.12 second clip. High Definition. 1280 x 720(30p).

Took a while to FTP it to the webserver. Here is the link: WOKEN UP.

I suppose now I should try to figure out how to make one of those cute little movie boxes where all one has to do is click the "play" button.

... update ... oooo, this is too easy ...



.Recommend to those in the know.

Going for a run

A picture of Christina going for her daily run. Two days before X-mas with Cayenne (the dobie).



.Recommend to those in the know.

New Glasses

Time for new glasses. The demands of acupuncture training have necessitated a pair of progressive-lens glasses. No more peering over or under the old frames. And Christina forbade me wearing my old-old pair of aviator style glasses even though they were progressive lenses.

Here is an animated gif of all three glasses. I rather like the new Lenon-esk frames.



.Recommend to those in the know.

Ecological Footprint

I took another FOOTPRINT test. The last one I took was in 2005 and my score was 2.9. Or, we would need nearly three earths for the world to live as consumptively as I do. Well, x-mas 2009, my score with a more refined test was ... 3.18. I'm getting worse!

Ever play with a child's balloon, especially a longer one? Squeeze one end and the other gets fat. Always fun trying to prevent the non-squeezed end from expanding. That highly elaborate balloon analogy applies to the real world, too. It popped into my head as I read Capitalist Pig's ancient posting on footprints.

His posting was about ecological footprints or, alternatively, how much of the rest of the world do we have to suppress in order to maintain and improve our own standard of living. Socialist Swine (CapPigs counterpart) has to dominate 4.5 times his entitlement for the priviledge of living as he does. And I have to hog 200% more than is due to me. Plutocracy is so unbecoming and hypocritical.

Back to Balloon Theory: how does one make the sides more equalized?
Hint.

See how many earths it would take to sustain your lifestyle. My score in 2005 was:

Good thing the world has plenty of poor nations filled with poor people or we'd really be in a pickle.

.

Recommend to those in the know.

Summer of 2009

I have not made a Retreat posting in quite a while. This is the tentative plan for the summer construction season of 2009.



Yup, a garage with a storage loft. Initially to be used as a garage and storage structure but later to be turned into the power building. The power building to house batteries and electrical for the wind and solar components of the Retreat. We have water generation in the plans, too.


.Recommend to those in the know.

Last of the X-Mas Shopping

The girls are finally back having finished the last of their x-mas shopping. Phew! The credit card strain will be severe this year, I'm sure. But sometimes these things simply have to be done. The next several years may be lean by comparison ... and I am not complaining. Perhaps nothing is better for the environment than a grand downsizing of the global economy as human-kind can't seem to get its global responsibilities in order of their own accord.



.Recommend to those in the know.

In the Top 100

Hey, I'm in the top 100 herbal medicine blogs. Thank you Christina Laun. I was in the top 50 Alternative Medicine blogs just a little while ago. Maybe I should lobby for a new, and relevant, Canadian Blog Award category. Best Health?, no. Best Green?, hmm, maybe but who knows if I'll be Green next year what with all their warmongering and disrespectful (politician-like) ways. Best Always Right in the Long Run?, naw. How about Best Would Be Dictator of Canada? Closer. How about the Best Peace, Order and Good Government Blog? That sounds good.

Could expand on that; perhaps there should be a blog roll: no warmongers, no sexists and no political hacks. I smile ... that would narrow the field some, especially on the PB roll.

Every year it's the same thing ... sour grapes. Guess I'll just go play (the not so great) Call of Duty 5: World at War.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Festive Dinner

Well, we had a bit of a festive family dinner at the Petroleum Club in Calgary last night. The talk may have touched upon the economy a bit. The concensus is that as long as we can keep on working then all will probably be well. Our business, Arcady Holistic, is a bit quiet now but that is expected for us this time of year what with the the winter weather, hideous Calgary traffic, and seasonal diversions. The economic adjustments necessitated by NAFTA and globalization probably will not affect us that much.



Still, I can't help but think about what could have been had we not sold our rights (under NAFTA) to employ our citizens productively. Maybe we would be producing some spiffy little urban utility vehicles, or even a wind turbine or two. Perhaps even evolving unique Canadian livable communities. But, no, vanilla culture is the order of the day.

I suppose the old free-trade saw of no government subsidy is passe now as all rich governments are doing it. Is that one of those do as I say things?

.Recommend to those in the know.

Present Creep

There appears to be some serious present creep happening under the Christmas tree.



And there are a few more days yet to go. May be a motherload of an x-mas, this year.

.Recommend to those in the know.

X-mas Concert

It has been a while since I have been to a Christmas concert. Anyone with kids knows how wonderful they truly are. Now I get to go to concerts to see Christina playing the fiddle. She picked up the instrument 10 weeks ago ... her very first instrument!




.Recommend to those in the know.

Still alive

I am still alive. Not blogging because I am back in school. This is taking up most of my time ... and I continue to work part-time. It is all very, very difficult for an old fart like me.



I ride my bike to school, and back, each day.



Boy! Am I glad that we are now in x-mas break. The temperature is -32 C (without the wind chill factored in!).

.Recommend to those in the know.

Voting

I WILL be voting Green this election simply to guarantee that the global warming issue remains front and center. The world is out there and I do rather have a tendency to look past the end of my nose.

However, future elections are up for grabs as Green health dogma is too conformist and, of course, Greens support one side of a civil war (which is against the primacy requirement dictating self-determination of nations) in Afghanistan.Recommend to those in the know.

Back from NS

I am just back from Nova Scotia. I have been gone for a long time. You may have noticed that I made no postings while gone.

It occurred to me that somebody might actually check this blog for Green political postings ... seeing as how there is an election'n all. However, I have no plans to make any postings, political or otherwise, for the next while. I am working on business webpages and am back in school (of all things).

May pick this blogging thing up later, but not now.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Power Supply

This alien looking thing is the power supply that died in my computer last week. Fortunately, it is a relatively easy thing to replace.



No lasting harm. Phew!

.Recommend to those in the know.

Ookpik. Remember me?

Remember the Ookpik? (photo)



Lilah has a bit of an Ookpik collection. These Ookpiks were given to her by my sister.

I do not remember seeing Ookpiks around these days. They used to be very popular. I remember an Ookpik cartoon on TV when I was a child. And I used to draw little Ookpik doddles.

No longer fashionable, Ookpiks, now. I suppose it is no longer politically correct to make dolls or toys from seal skin. Still, I remember my seal skin winter boots as a child. Great boots.



.Recommend to those in the know.

Earth Hour - What was it good for?

Earth Hour - What was it good for?

Well, I can think of a couple of things (photo).



.Recommend to those in the know.

Another T-shirt

Another t-shirt to add to my collection. I bought two of these. One for Calgary and one for Nova Scotia. One can never say, "Bring the Troops Home," too often and in too many places.



You can get your own from this place.

And you can see some of my other t-shirts in this post.

.Recommend to those in the know.

Pulse weapons knocking airliners out of sky

American secret weapon knocking domestic aircraft out of the sky. After 9/11 ultra-secret defence systems have been put on automatic as human communications are too slow. However, the systems are not perfect and sometimes mitigating factors such as a no-fly list passenger or an undocumented flight path variation triggers a non-lethal, defensive reaction from the defensive grid.

Pulse weaponry, when used for defence, must necessarily be used by automated systems. Typically accidental (or deliberate) firings occur as aircraft cross into a defended national boundary.

A defensive grid system has been set up around 75% of the U.S., around Heathrow airport, around Japan, and plans are in place for a defensive grid to be established around Gaza Palestine.

Flasking didn't get me on the watch list (I don't think) but this one might.

Recommend to those in the know.

What is up with counter demonstrators?

What is up with counter demonstrators?

If I am organizing, for example, a support local soccer parade, is it respectful for community hockey types to come out and attempt to divert attention and potential monies to their cause, instead? Or should the hockey types simply organize their own parade the next week? I think one cause should be respectful of the other and hold separate events.

Seems obvious. Fund-raisers hate alternative cause gate crashers and scuffles may result. I would blame all scuffles on the gate-crashers.

And so the “white supremacist” parade had their demonstration deliberately (date1, date 2) gate-crashed by an anti-racism rally organized for the express purpose of counter-demonstrating. Both causes gaining more publicity than they normally would, as a result. There was, of course, much bad behaviour, leaving the police sorely taxed, which would not have occurred had they demonstrated separately.

Counter demonstrating is near warfare and is, in my opinion, a separate issue from having the freedom to express an opinion. It is deliberately provocative intimidation.

So, too, with all of the peace demonstrations. The pro-war demo-crashers show up and insert themselves in the very midst of the peaceniks. And the pro-war demo-crashers are a foul-mouthed aggressive lot to be sure. They show up on purpose to counter demonstrate.

If an anti-war activist sabotaged a pro-war headlined newspaper run then a crime would have been committed. Counter-demonstrating should also be a crime. Or, more precisely, interfering with free speech should be a crime. Clearly, it is bad behaviour.

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Recommend to those in the know.

At least it is health-thinking progress

Well, at least it is health-thinking progress

Calgary Herald, Danielle Smith, Talking the Right Talk.

Danielle Smith is making noises about funding the consumer of health care instead of the supplier of health care. And one political party has picked up on it.

Wildrose Alliance leader Paul Hinman raised this issue several times in the provincial leaders' debate, when he said that funding should follow the patient.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts (example 1, example 2), it is not the Greens that have picked up this concept … not by a long shot … although both provincially here in Alberta and federally for a great many years they have long been exposed to this rational. They do, instead, prefer the politically easier, paternalistic throw-money-at-it solutions. That is what happens when you listen to unionized nurses or trough-feeding medicos instead of analyzing the needs and demands of people.

The consumer, for whom the health care system is supposed to exist, is the best prioritizer of health care delivery. The suppliers are simply pigs at a trough, after all, they are not a moral lot.

What Danielle Smith is missing, though, is that the medico monopoly needs to be broken, as well. If it is not broken then the medicos will simply price-fix services and no gain in efficiency will be attained.

Danielle Smith recognizes that most of health is already outside of the health care system.

Whether it is a doctor's office, a naturopath, a pharmacist, a massage therapist, a dentist, an orthodontist, or any of the myriad private clinics offering optometry, podiatry, dermatology, MRIs, and hundreds of other services, when patients come into contact with the health care system, it is more than likely through the thousands of health care entrepreneurs who provide these services every day.

She still needs to understand that consumers of health care need to be in control of the health care system.

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Recommend to those in the know.

Alberta is ready for high speed rail – NOT

Alberta is ready for high speed rail – NOT

Alberta is not ready for high speed rail. Plunking a high speed rail line between Calgary and Edmonton will accomplish very little, in my opinion, except make some people very rich. And that is a poor reason for high-speed rail.

Alberta, as everyone knows, plans nothing. Everything is throw-money-at-it and hope to avert a crisis. Health care, unplanned. Education, unplanned. Child care, unplanned. Labour, unplanned. Housing, unplanned. Growth, no plan. Alberta is a wild west for corporate exploitation. And so it will be for high-speed rail.

Where is the plan for high-speed rail? An economic feasibility study by various special interest groups is not a plan.

A plan is supposed to tell Albertans just how this high-speed rail line integrates into an over-all transportation policy designed to improve efficiencies and connect livable, walkable inclusive zoning communities. No such thing exists.

If this expensive high-speed rail link does not address social issues within Alberta then what is the good of it?

I get frightened when I see the Calgary Herald supporting something. One just knows the people of Alberta do not enter into the equation.

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Recommend to those in the know.

I am Top 50 in Alternative-Health Blogs

Well, well, well, I am in the top 50 Alternative-Health Blogs. Such an honour. I would like to thank the academy.

Actually, I feel kinda bad. What with all this election stuff that has been flying around since the beginning of the year I have not been making many health postings. Yet I still get listed in the top 50. Yea, me.

And I did a quick calculation of my tags. All told only 146 health-related posts out of a total of 724. That is 20 percent. Yet I still get listed in the top 50. Yea, me.

I have been watching the health news of late and, of course, lots to criticize. But they have been too easy targets for me to get worked up about. And I have been feeling rather repetitive of late in always trying to make the same points over and over again but with twists thrown in for holding one's interest.

And trying to educate a rather uneducatable lot within the Green Parties is always difficult, too. There are astute health thinking people in the party but the throw-money-at-ems are far less risky a position to take. Politicians can ignore the fact that people seek health options outside of the medical system but that will not address health issues. The feds are particularly bad. And I have not written about that stuff for a while. Yet I still get listed in the top 50. Yea, me.

And now I am slightly disappointed not to win some sort of top 50 in Anti-Poverty Blogs. I do rale against the oppressive orthodoxy and conformity surrounding this issue, just as in health.

So all this political stuff is putting a crimp in my health activism. Maybe I should just be happy with my bit of notoriety. Maybe I should just dump this political stuff especially as most political types are rather unsavory obsessive diddlers of every little thing. No fun, them, really. They use way too many words.

I suppose I should start thinking about making a health post. I have a reputation to uphold.


.Recommend to those in the know.

The Tibet struggle is not my struggle

The Tibet struggle is not my struggle.

Tibet is a part of China. I have no interest in fomenting dissent in a region of China by supporting a separatist cause. And I especially am not keen to endorse a Tibetan leadership based on sexism and religion.

Most Progressive Bloggers seem to say separation of church and state is good; except where fashionable to be otherwise. Most Progressive Bloggers pronounce favorably for non-sexist representation in government; unless it is for monks.

And I am not wild about the religion. The Dalai Lama now says he can pick a re-incarnation successor even before he dies so as to perpetuate political/religious agitation. Is the Dalai Lama a political leader or a religious leader, or both?

I side with China on this. I do not favor multi-generational resistance of a land dispute, and outside agitation in favor of perpetuating it. Tibet is part of China. Done deal.

And just what country is good enough to hold an Olympics? The US?

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Recommend to those in the know.