Canadian Nanotech

WIRED has an interesting article, "Nanotech Makes Wood Planes Fly Again", on an apparently successful Canuck process that creates nano-size particles of cellulose. Boeing thinks it's a great idea, and we have lots of cellulose.

Researchers in Canada have unveiled plans for a factory that will use nanotechnology to extract cellulose from wood and use it to form composite materials for airplanes. It's not so implausible when you consider that Boeing and Airbus are using significant amounts of carbon composite materials in their latest programs.

Brier Dudley, who writes a technology blog over at the Seattle Times, says the factory has been designed by FP Innovations, a nonprofit research organization supporting Canada's forestry industry. Company President Jim Dangerfield says the process allows the extraction of cellulose particles just 20 nanometers long and 20 nanometers wide, and the factory will be able to produce as much as a ton of them each day. Combined with other materials, the fibers are tough enough to form a new generation of composite materials.

Gimme some of that ole time "crop protection product"

So, Michelle Obama decides to grow a vegetable garden. On almost any plane one views it from, it makes sense, not the least of which is that it sets a good example, particularly since every effort is going to be made to grow the produce without the aid of unnecessary chemical crap.

But as Sabina points out, there ain't no tyranny like that of a good example, and now Michelle Obama has come into the sights of the pesticide and agro-chemical lobby.

In fact, the idea of the US First Lady engaging in organic gardening has the US big-agro lobby in a flat spin. The idea of encouraging people to grow their own food is abhorrent enough, (it will chew through their bottom line like a slug on a lettuce leaf), but to suggest that they do it without a bottle of domesticated agent orange?! Well, they're just not going to stand for it.

So... the Mid America CropLife Association sent Michelle Obama a letter. (Actually they sent it to Mrs. Barack Obama, as though she had somehow surrendered her first name in a convention which died in the latter half of the last century.) Amazingly, the contents of one of the most condescending letters you may ever read made it into the hands of Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore. You have to read the whole thing, but here's a sample:

As you go about planning and planting the White House garden, we respectfully encourage you to recognize the role conventional agriculture plays in the U.S in feeding the ever-increasing population, contributing to the U.S. economy and providing a safe and economical food supply. America's farmers understand crop protection technologies are supported by sound scientific research and innovation.

Conventional agriculture?! Safe and economical?! Sound scientific research and innovation?! Who are these clowns trying to have on? Not even to mention the newest set of buzzwords designed to camouflage known carcinogens - "crop protection products".

After reading Jill's post, do check out the first comment where one of MACA's obfuscations is thoroughly dispatched.

After that, take the time to check out the officers and board of directors of Mid America CropLife Association. Chemicals anyone?

Harper's "mid-continent trade corridor"

Once upon a time the NAFTA Superhighway/Trade Corridor was just a conspiracy theory.

Then it was a gleam in Manitoba Premier Gary Doer's eye. From his 2007 Speech from the Throne :

"Manitoba is also taking a major role in the development of a Mid-Continent Trade Corridor, connecting our northern Port of Churchill with trade markets throughout the central United States and Mexico. To advance the concept, an alliance has been built with business leaders and state and city governments spanning the entire length of the Corridor."

That alliance was the Ports-to-Plains Trade Corridor, a lobby group comprised of US and Canadian elected officials and business leaders, along with SPP luminaries like Ron Covais, chair of the US end of the North American Competitiveness Council.

Later it showed up as a useful map on an Alberta government website - see above.

Now, according to the Government of Canada website, it's "a new job-creating investment contained in the Harper Government’s Economic Action Plan" :

"The CentrePort Canada initiative involves using the James Armstrong Richardson International Airport and surrounding land as a hub to import goods from Asia and Europe and then distributing those goods throughout North America by air, rail and road. The governments of Canada and Manitoba are jointly funding the next phase of this project, which involves building a high-speed transportation corridor.

It serves as a natural connection point between Atlantic shipping lanes and the Asia Pacific Gateway and as the northern terminus of the fast-growing mid-continent trade corridor, with the potential to expand to take advantage of trade opportunities in Canada’s North."

According to the G&M, Manitoba and the federal government are each chipping in $100M to kick it off.

Sigh. They just don't make conspiracy theories like they used to.

Cross-posted at Creekside.

I know! I know! Pick me!

Everyone retires... eventually. Some of us want to retire early, some don't want to retire at all.

So, when someone retires without explanation, it raises questions.

Jim Judd, who has worked in the public service for 36 years, has informed the prime minister that he'll retire within months, sources close to the Prime Minister's Office have confirmed.

As director of CSIS, Judd has presided over an extraordinary growth of the organization. He leaves at a delicate time, with the spy agency under pressure to prepare for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and to provide increased field intelligence from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

The CBC's Brian Stewart said there is nothing at this time to suggest Judd is leaving under pressure or in anger.

Perhaps he just doesn't want to deal with the fallout from the Olympic games.

Naw... he's well up to that task.

Maybe he's just looking to retire a little early. Makes me wonder however, since, as a much younger person, I intend to work until I can't lift a pencil. When the job is good, you hang on as long as you can.

Maybe he's looking at that great benefit offered by the Canada Pension Plan.

Umm... nope.

Maybe he was told to take the pressure off a cabinet minister.

And he told the PMO that nobody was going to pin that shit on him.

Buy Conservative!!!

Jebuss fucking wept.

Far and Wide and Impolitical tell you why.

Really clever

GIZMODO has an article on a bicycle that is just what the doctor ordered for those of us who aren't Lance Armstrong. If you're not as spry as you used to be, check it out.

Since its launch in Ashland, Oregon in early March, the GlideCycle has been attracting attention around the world for its enormous potential. Anyone can benefit from using the GlideCycle, but most exciting is what it offers amputees (including double amputees), accident victims, arthritis sufferers, people with neurological conditions, the obese and folk with sports injuries as well as those simply looking for a new way to exercise or train without impact on joints, bones and muscles.

At the going down of the Sun, and in the morning...

With condolences and respect to the family and friends of Trooper Karine Blais, 12^e Régiment Blindé du Canada serving with the 2nd Battalion, Royal 22^e Régiment. Killed due to enemy action.

Adsum

Stonewall Wally Oppal starts his re-election campaign

CanWest today : RCMP officers may be charged in Dziekanski death

"The four RCMP officers who Tasered a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver International Airport may face charges in his death, B.C.’s Attorney General said Monday.

"Nothing is final . . . particularly where we’re getting more and more evidence elicited on a daily basis," Oppal told the CBC, referring to the inquiry evidence. "So it may well be, at the end of the day, the people in the criminal justice branch could re-examine this."

Really, CanWest? Are you quite sure that's what he said?

Because what I'm remembering is that all three levels of Executive Management in the Criminal Justice Branch watched exactly the same Paul Pritchard video footage the rest of us saw and after comparing it to Cpl. Benjamin (Monty) Robinson's statement in which he claimed 12 times that Dziekanski swung the stapler at them and had to be stunned twice before being wrestled to the ground, they announced that the video supported the officers' accounts. They then mustered the gall to issue this unanimous statement on December 12, 2008 :

"There is a substantial body of independent evidence which supports that the Officers in question were lawfully engaged in their duties when they encountered Mr. Dziekanski, and the force they used to subdue and restrain him was reasonable and necessary in all the circumstances.

In light of this independent evidence, there is not a substantial likelihood of conviction in this case for any of the offences considered, in fact, the available evidence falls markedly short of this standard."

And that available evidence hasn't changed, has it?
So what did Stonewall Wally Oppal actually say today?

CP (Italics mine) :

"RCMP officers who testified at the inquiry into the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver's airport could still face charges after the inquiry but so far there is nothing to suggest that might happen, B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal said Monday.

"It's always the case in any determination where we decide that no charges were warranted that if there was new evidence and that new evidence was appreciably different then in those circumstances charges could be laid," Oppal told The Canadian Press. "But we're talking theory here."

"(The criminal justice branch) said at that time there would be no charges and all I said is that if new evidence emerges there's always a possibility to lay charges, but I didn't specifically say in this case it would happen," said Oppal.

Oppal said he's "not prepared to buy in" that there was a significant change in evidence and there were false statements made."

Care to revise your bullshit headline now, CanWest?
Everyone else ... as you were.

Electioneering for the May 12 BC Election apparently started in earnest today with Wally suddenly remembering his seat is up for grabs too.

Cross-posted at Creekside

Follow the Harperites to Victoria

This poster, which dates back to 1937, contains a slogan which most coastal British Columbians would remember well into the 1980s. Oddly, it had something of a foundation as anyone travelling from the mainland to Vancouver Island could note the perpetual flocks of gulls following the ferries on their scheduled runs. There was a good reason they were there - easy pickings from the garbage tossed over the side.

Today, there is a different breed flying into Victoria - Larus harperus. And this bunch is shovelling money off the back of trucks all over Conservative ridings in BC. (Emphasis mine)

Against a backdrop of precipitous job losses in British Columbia, Premier Gordon Campbell will launch the provincial election campaign Tuesday.

If he wins his third term on May 12, he may take a few moments to compose a nice thank-you note to Stephen Harper's federal Conservative government – in the three weeks leading up to the campaign, his B.C. Liberal government members have shared the podium with Tory MPs and cabinet ministers to hand out money at least 46 times.

That's just the in-person appearances. Funding announcements have flooded in at a much faster rate.

Together, the two levels of government have distributed roughly $1-billion in “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects designed to backstop job losses that have hit the province's construction industry the hardest.

There's a good reason for that: Of the 36 federal House of Commons seats occupied by British Columbians, the Harper party holds 22.

In the perpetual election campaign that is the Harper Party of Canada, British Columbia is an inexplicable landfill of votes.

To anyone from outside BC, the politics of the province would look more than a little strange. The BC Liberals, just to start off, aren't. It's just a name and they have no affiliation whatsoever with the federal political party of the same taxonomic name. In fact, the BC Liberal Party is a coalition of the former Bennett/Vanderzalm Social Credit, social conservatives and a further assortment of right-wingers. They are political conservatives. The name is mere camouflage. It is a government known for deliberate union busting, privatization of anything that isn't nailed down, and excessive salary increases to deputy ministers accompanied by the worn excuse that you have to pay big bucks to get and keep good people. (Not that there is anywhere else for them to go.)

Then there is the BC NDP which does have a loose affiliation with it's federal cousin. Good or bad, right or wrong, the behaviour of the federal NDP has an effect on the electability of the provincial party. That aside, the party has its own ghosts which crawl out of the muck and an unenviable record of disasterous fiscal management. If you want to start a British Columbian's eye's rolling you only have to mention the name Glen Clark, who, after maneouvering himself into a position to oust premier (and fellow NDPer) Mike Harcourt became the 31st premier of BC and led a government responsible for the fast ferry fiasco, the infamous fudge-it budget and a scandal known as casinogate.

Unfortunately, it tends to end there. The political spectrum is polarized to each extreme with little, if anything, being offered from anywhere close to the political centre. There are other parties, but they have such minimal impact on the provincial political carpet that they qualify as nothing more than an irritating stain.

That brings us back to the Harperites finding their way back to BC just in time for a provincial election.

“Yes, the Conservative government is being helpful,” said B.C. Finance Minister Colin Hansen.

That would be more than a small understatement. The Harper government is slobbering all over themselves to get in there and help buy votes for Campbell's Liberals. And it's not like there won't be a price to pay. Harper will expect Campbell to deliver British Columbia at the next federal election - and if Campbell wins on May 12, he will be forced to follow through for Harper.

All of the spending promised British Columbians during those joint photo ops depends on not just one election, but two: For most of the "promises" to actually come to fruition the BC Liberals will have to form the next government. Worse though, is that virtually all of the money offered by the Harperites has not yet been allocated. It will take another federal budget to see any of the promised funding and even Harper isn't arrogant enough to believe his minority government will survive long enough to make such a delivery.

The message: You need to re-elect us, both of us, or this could all go in the crapper.

The obvious: The BC Liberals and the Harper conservatives are now in bed together.

It should be interesting to watch and see if the Harperites withdraw to Ottawa after April 14 or if they continue to mix paste and meddle in BC provincial politics. In any case, as most coastal British Columbians are aware, whether the bird is Larus pacificus or Larus harperus, they will eventually steal your food and shit on you.

Your god has one helluva sense of humour

The Pennsylvania Emergency Alert System used to look like this...



During a Good Friday broadcast of the Vatican Easter service however, something changed.

A Philadelphia cable network's early morning broadcast of a Good Friday service at the Vatican abruptly changed to something wildly different — a 30-second "Girls Gone Wild" ad.

Some gods just like to have fun.

The Kyoto Box

DEFORESTATION FOR FIREWOOD is a major problem in the third world. Shannon Carr-Shand writes for Forum for the Future, a very interesting ecology site, and tells all about this clever invention. It cooks things, and sterilizes water, and it's brain-dead simple and dirt-cheap.

rick warren "Sick With Exhaustion" . . . .

Does the good pastor really expect us to believe that one?

Per Huffington Post:

Rick Warren Cancels ABC Appearance "Moments Before," Claims "Exhaustion"
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | April 12, 2009

Pastor Rick Warren who last week denied ever supporting California's anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 despite evidence to the contrary, has now bailed on an opportunity to explain himself.

Warren canceled an Easter Sunday appearance on ABC's "This Week" just "moments before the scheduled interview," host George Stephanopoulos told viewers.

Even 2008's winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics Paul Krugman weighs in on this one.

The next time the rev. is preachin' the ten commandments, he may want to pay particular attention to the ninth one . . . .

(Cross posted from Moved to Vancouver)

Mirrors are magical

I've seen smarter cacti

Republicans - because we needed a name for people who are dumber than houseplants. I just hope someone remembers to water Betty Brown occasionally, it must get dry in Texas.

Brown suggested that Asian-Americans should find a way to make their names more accessible.

“Rather than everyone here having to learn Chinese — I understand it’s a rather difficult language — do you think that it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here?” Brown said.

Brown later told Ko: “Can’t you see that this is something that would make it a lot easier for you and the people who are poll workers if you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that’s easier for Americans to deal with?”

Yes, Betty, because Asian names like Ko, Sato, Hu and Singh are much much more difficult than say Tatigliano, Satterthwaite, Papadopolis, Rogazinski, Medvedev or Gonzales. I'll admit that some Asian names are a mouthful - Indonesian, Thai and Sri Lankan names in particular tend to be longer and more complex compared to short, blunt Anglo-Saxon monikers like Brown and Wood - but that isn't really the point here. Brown isn't suggesting that all names should be anglicized, just Asian names.

But it isn't about race.

Sure it's not. Nothing is ever about race with the Republicans and the conservatives, except when they get shoved back from the trough, then its all about discrimination against poor, persecuted middle-aged, wealthy, white men.

crossposted from the woodshed

Thanks, Randy

How to get a guitar player off your porch? 

Pay for the pizza.

NAMM joke, Randy Bachman, Vinyl Tap, CBC. NAMM is the music merchants' association show, held twice a year. According to Randy, the US buys 4 million guitars per year, totalling over1 billion dollars. The vintage market is 10 billion per year.

No, but I think there may be anarchists in my broom closet

Is your washroom breeding...Bolsheviks?
ScotTissue Towels- really dry!
Employees lose respect for a company that fails to provide decent facilities for their comfort

A major tissue manufacturer sounds the alarm in this reprint of a classical ad from the 1920's

Illustration taken from the totally awesome collection of great stuff for sale at Northlands Poster Collective.

A major tip of the fez to Hypatia!!

Stevie, at work

STEVIE IS AT IT AGAIN. Doesn't like science, and is really going after the Quebec vote. CBC reports "Famed star observatory in Quebec loses federal support".

The Mont Mégantic Observatory — about 250 kilometres east of Montreal, in the Eastern Townships — is the largest astronomy centre of its kind in eastern North America, and a popular destination for researchers and star enthusiasts alike.

But funding cuts at the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) mean the centre is losing half its annual budget this year, leaving the observatory’s future in peril, said director Robert Lamontagne.

Apparently, the rationale is that we're doing so much elsewhere. However, the outfit is doing good science, and it's available to students, unlike Hawaii and S. America.

And we do good science. Here's another CBC report about the data results from a baloon flight from two years ago, where a deep-infra-red sensor package observed more galaxies in 11 days than had been detected in the previous decade. These are huge galaxies that formed in the very early universe. Not only that, but we did it for $49.95, relativistically, so to speak.

Do click on the picture — it's kinda cool.

The Human Body

It takes your food seven seconds to get from your mouth to your stomach.

One human hair can support 3 kg (6.6 lb).

The average man's penis is three times the length of his thumb.

Human thighbones are stronger than concrete.

A woman's heart beats faster than a man's.

There are about one trillion bacteria on each of your feet.

Women blink twice as often as men.

The average person's skin weighs twice as much as the brain.

Your body uses 300 muscles to balance itself when you are standing still.

If saliva cannot dissolve something, you cannot taste it.

Women reading this will be finished now.

Men are still busy checking their thumbs.


Shamelessly stolen from Miss Cellania... which, if you're not reading regularly, means you're really not on the tOObs.

Survival & Adaptation

ENGLISH RUSSIA, again, with a thoughtful article on Moscow's commuting mutts, entitled "Smartest Dogs: Moscow Stray Dogs". These hounds have it together. 

Russian scientists say that Moscow stray dogs became much smarter. The four legged oldest human’s friends demonstrate real smartness such as riding the Moscow metro every morning to get from their suburban places of living to the fat regions of Moscow center. Once they arrive to the downtown they demonstrate different new, previously unseen for the dog skills. Those skills can include “the hunt for shawarma” for example, the popular among Muscovites eastern cuisine dish.

Moscow ecologists think that dogs started acquiring this habits in 1990s, when the Soviet union collapsed and Moscow has fell into the hands of new class of Russian capitalists. They understood the true value of the downtown realty underestimated by previous Communist owners and became removing all the industrial complexes Moscow had in its centre to its outskirts. Those places were used by homeless dogs as a shelter often, so the dogs had to move together with their houses, so they had to learn how to travel Moscow subway 

Sorry isn't good enough

I appreciate that the police in Vancouver have a difficult job to do right now what with the wave of gang violence engulfing the city, but the police have absolutely no right to seize cameras from journalists or any individual who is taking pictures at a crime scene, whether it interferes with their investigation or not. They are within their rights to request that news organizations not publish information that might impede an investigation, or to ask individuals to come forward with photos or videos of crimes, but the decision of what to do with such private property is up to the owner. The officer who assaulted the news photographer and threatened him with arrest should be fired immediately. This kind of conduct is illegal and a violation of a host of constitutional rights. In light of the actions of the police in the Dziekanski killing at the Vancouver airport and the attempt by the RCMP to confiscate evidence of their misconduct, and a cop in Ottawa not so long ago, this kind of thing cannot be tolerated by a free society. It isn't as if the Vancouver cops haven't been accused of this kind of thing before either.