Old Face book Notes: March 08

Where's the Beef? Eating all the ^%$ Corn That's Where It Is!
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 11:02pm | Edit Note | Delete
This whole world food shortage thing has me watching any reports on it pretty closely these days. One of the latest reports claims that increased biofuels production will widen an area in the Gulf of Mexico known as the Dead Zone.
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=5d2865da-e4d9-481d-ac9b-d44e298bf1b1
There's some pretty scary stuff there. There's also an interesting aside from the lead author of the report in this article. Here's the jist of it.
Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia says one way to reduce the problems is to use less land to grow corn for cattle, and reduce the global appetite for beef.
"If we didn't eat beef we'd easily have enough land to feed the planet," he says
Fair enough. I"m off the beef as of now. Well, actually, as of a few weeks ago. I was a little shocked to hear that Patrick Swayze had cancer, and being a neurotic worry wart hell bent on immortality (oxymoron right there) I decided to look up all of the ways that I could prevent cancer. One of the tips was to avoid red meats and processed meats. So I've been off the cows for a couple of weeks already, but it's great to have another reason to leave it, because frankly, I really like steaks and burgers and hot dogs etc, and quitting is tough.
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Updated about 6 months ago


Full Moon
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008 at 12:39am | Edit Note | Delete
Thought I'd share this.

Full Moon

Above the tower -- a lone, twice-sized moon.
On the cold river passing night-filled homes,
It scatters restless gold across the waves.
On mats, it shines richer than silken gauze.

Empty peaks, silence: among sparse stars,
Not yet flawed, it drifts. Pine and cinnamon
Spreading in my old garden . . . All light,
All ten thousand miles at once in its light!
Tu Fu (AD 712-770)

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From the Desk of John Nash.
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Monday, March 10, 2008 at 12:52am | Edit Note | Delete
Strong increases in food prices, which have been reaching record levels, are expected to continue until at least 2010, fueling a "new hunger" across the globe and anarchy on the streets of poorer nations, a top United Nations official said Thursday.

Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN's World Food Program, said the global economy had created "a perfect storm for the world's hungry, caused by high oil and food prices and low food stocks."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/06/business/FOOD.php

Now this is probably pretty alarming stuff to most of you. It is to me too, but for different reasons than you would think.
Josette Sheeran, the woman quoted above, has a colorful history. What made me interested in looking up her history is that the above article contains in it some pretty strong anti-biofuel technology rhetoric, implying that the food crisis is primarily due to large quantities of land being set aside for biofuel production. It goes as far as to suggest that "Governments need to look more carefully at the link between the acceleration in biofuels and food supply and give more thought" to biofuels policy, Sheeran said. "This land could be better used."
Anyway, Sheeran's political history includes a stint at the World Bank with Paul Wolfowitz, one of the primary architects of the neo-conservative movement. Previous to that she worked with Empower America, founded by William Bennet. Her appointment to the UN's World Food Program was enthusiastically endorsed by John Bolton, US Ambassador to the UN. Lastly she was appointed by G.W. himself. So what do John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, G.W and William Bennet have in common? They are all members of the infamous PNAC group. Yep. The same people that brought you Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, and the Iraq War would now have you believe that biofuel is burning up all the food we could be eating. Do you believe it? The markets certainly do unfortunately.
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Updated about 6 months ago


I dedicate this note to the memory...

Of all the children who died senseless accidental deaths at the hands of these good ol' traditional parents. My mother in-law e-mailed this to me.

My Mom used to cut chicken, chop eggs and spread mayo on the same cutting board with the same knife and no bleach, but we didn't seem to get food poisoning.

My Mom used to defrost hamburger on the counter AND I used to eat it raw sometimes, too. Our school sandwiches were wrapped in wax paper in a brown paper bag, not in ice-pack coolers, but I can't remember getting e-coli.

Almost all of us would have rather gone swimming in the lake instead of a pristine pool (talk about boring), no beach closures then.

The term cell phone would have conjured up a phone in a jail cell, and a pager was the school PA system.

We all took gym, not PE .. and risked permanent injury with a pair of high top Ked's (only worn in gym) instead of having cross-training athletic shoes with air cushion soles and built in light reflectors. I can't recall any injuries but they must have happened because they tell us how much safer we are now.

Flunking gym was not an option even for stupid kids! I guess PE must be much harder than gym.

Speaking of school, we all said prayers and sang the national anthem, and staying in detention after school caught all sorts of negative attention.

We must have had horribly damaged psyches. What an archaic health system we had then. Remember school nurses? Ours wore a hat and everything.

I thought that I was supposed to accomplish something before I was allowed to be proud of myself.

I just can't recall how bored we were without computers, Play Station, Nintendo, X-box or 270 digital TV cable stations.

Oh yeah .. and where was the Benadryl and sterilization kit when I got that bee sting? I could have been killed!

We played 'king of the hill' on piles of gravel left on vacant construction sites, and when we got hurt, Mom pulled out the 48-cent bottle of Mercurochrome (kids liked it better because it didn't sting like iodine did) and then we got our butt spanked.

Now it's a trip to the emergency room, followed by a 10-day dose of a $49 bottle of antibiotics, and then Mom calls the attorney to sue the contractor for leaving a horribly vicious pile of gravel where it was such a threat.

We didn't act up at the neighbor's house either because if we did, we got our butt spanked there and then we got our butt spanked again when we got home.

I recall Donny Reynolds from next door coming over and doing his tricks on the front stoop, just before he fell off. Little did his Mom know that she could have owned our house. Instead, she picked him up and swatted him for being such a goof. It was a neighborhood run amuck.

To top it off, not a single person I knew had ever been told that they were from a dysfunctional family. How could we possibly have known that?

We needed to get into group therapy and anger management classes? We were obviously so duped by so many societal ills that we didn't even notice that the entire country wasn't taking Prozac! How did we ever survive?

Well a lot of you didn't survive you moron! That's why things changed. You also lived in a world that offered a hell of a lot more spare time. You could work as a clerk in a grocery store and still buy a house and expect to pay it off in a decade back then. The average income in 1950 was 3200 per year, and a new home cost approx 14,000. By contrast the average income today is approx $30,000, and the average home in a city costs over $300,000. So while wages have increased approximately 10x, housing has increased 20x. The average car in 1950 cost 1750.00, and today would cost approximately 32 thousand dollars Again, that's 20 times the price they would have paid, on only 10x the earnings. The list goes on. They were taxed less, food was more affordable, clothing was more affordable. Essentially we bring home about half of what they did every year, or pay twice as much as they did for all the major purchases, depending on how you look at it. This means that in Canada, if this same discrepancy between prices and earnings continues, in the year 2058, an average house will cost 6 million dollars (20x $300,000), and average earnings will be $300,000 (10x $30,000.) An average car will cost $600,000. That is of course a drastic example, but it's proportionately accurate, and I think it shows that the world we inherited and have to parent in, is a hell of a lot different than the Howdy doody land they came out of all smiling and full of love and righteousness.

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Updated about 6 months ago


Ah, I miss this guy.
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Friday, March 7, 2008 at 12:16am | Edit Note | Delete
I really love Canadian politics. I don't claim any specific party affiliation, but I do have my favorite leaders past and present. The subject of the following article is perhaps my all time favorite Canadian political figure of all time. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080306.wchretblack0306/BNStory/National/home?cid=al_gam_mostview
He was the last of the old guard, and probably the last streetfighter we'll ever see on Parliament Hill.
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Further Evidence of a Canadian Conspiracy.
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Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 12:23pm | Edit Note | Delete
I may have written about this in the past, I'm not sure. In any case, I've recently discovered new evidence supporting my theory.
I've lived all over the West, and I can't really speak to whether or not this clandestine government activity may or may not be happening out that way, but I'm damn positive that it is happening here.
Here's the thing. I've moved around a lot in my day. A lot more than most people. There was a time when I was younger when I sometimes found myself changing homes monthly. The reasons for these frequent moves bears no relevance here, suffice it to say that I was a rolling stone. The important thing is that I've had dozens and dozens of addresses in my life. Now in all of my life, I can't ever recall having mail delivered to my home before 1pm. You would think that if Canada Post does in fact deliver mail in the morning, I would have had at least one address out of the more than 100 receive a mail delivery in the morning. But uh-uh. It's always been after 1pm.
I'm utterly convinced that there is a great conspiracy among postal workers to take the mornings off, work 4 hours in the afternoon, and then claim that they put in an 8 hour day. I've been asking around too by the way. I've yet to meet ANYONE that receives mail in the morning.
Now, I've moved again, to yet another neighbourhood in which I have never previously been a resident, and still no mail until after 3pm. I think it's high time we demanded a judicial inquiry. And that's all I have to say about that.
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Updated about 6 months ago

I'm probably going to kill someone.
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Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 6:57am | Edit Note | Delete
What the %^$# is this? -29 this morning?! Okay, fine, it's -29, but tomorrow is supposed to go to 1. A 30 degree temperature change in a day! I don't know that I can take it. I'm going nuts.
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Spring was here.
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Tuesday, March 4, 2008 at 8:25pm | Edit Note | Delete
There are those who are ruled by the moon. Others consider themselves children of the stars. Some people claim they are ruled by the sun, or the water. I'm a child of the wind my friends, and all that it brings. I'm ruled by the seasons, and I'm not being metaphorical here, I'm talking my entire being is dominated by the weather the wind may blow. It goes beyond just regular Seasonal Affective Disorder. The weather actually makes me downright nutty. So much so that when winter approaches and starts to wrap it's icy cold fingers around my very soul, I need to take some pretty serious preventative measures or I actually lose my will to live. In the spring, I get a somewhat opposite reaction. I become filled with such an exuberance for living each day to the fullest that I completely disregard any and all responsibilities beyond immediate food and shelter.
Anyway today I'm in a bit of a funk because it's supposed to get damn cold tonight and stay damned cold for a while and it's like a kick in the freakin' teeth after thee beautiful week we had last week. It's a particularlry hard kick in the teeth too because I was up pretty high about springtime. I actually have 3 novels germinating in my brain as a result of last week's weather, and 2 of them are off to a damn fine start. I've also rediscovered my guitar as of late and I've learned a few new progressions. This is the thing that I love about spring. My creative urges absolutely explode, and after being borderline suicidal all winter long it's an absolutely amazing feeling. But to be rising up on that wave and then get hit with this bloody cold is almost more than a man can take when he's not ready for it. Anyway, that's all for now, it's supposed to be getting warm and sunny again in a few more days, so I'm going to hang in there. I'm sure I can sleep until then.