You’re going to get wet

Image from The Economist magazine.

I lived for a few years in a home on Vancouver Island a few feet from the ocean, and had an interest in global warming increasingly creeping water up towards home during the coming years.

I didn’t see the sense living in a million-dollar home with a million-dollar ocean view if in 20-40 years you need a submarine to get to your car.

Lately, I’ve seen more and more waterfront homes coming on the market for $4-28 million dollars. Maybe these owners are deciding to get out while the getting is good.

Before Hurricane Sandy tore through New York and New Jersey, it stopped in Florida. Huge waves covered beaches, swept over Fort Lauderdale’s concrete sea wall and spilled onto A1A, Florida’s coastal highway. Beach erosion forced Fort Lauderdale to buy sand from an inland mine in central Florida; the mine’s soft, white sand stands out against the darker, grittier native variety.

Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy. The Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, a Category 4 storm, caused $1 billion-worth of damage in current dollars. Were it to strike today the insured losses would be $125 billion, reckons AIR Worldwide, a catastrophe-modelling firm. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, caused $23 billion in damage; today it would be twice that.

The Economist magazine has a great article titled “You’re going to get wet”. Well worth reading.

New federal rules may block safe injection sites. Harper’s folly.

(Health Minister meets moose.)

Despite all the evidence proving the Insite safe injection site saves lives and has made the Downtown Eastside community safer and healthier, despite police, the Mayor of Vancouver, and the local board of health saying Insite has made the community safer and healthier, despite the Supreme Court of Canada saying the government must not allow sick people to die on specious grounds related to the “war on drugs”, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq said the bill, the Respect for Communities Act, “would require the local views to be taken into account, local law enforcement, municipal leaders (and) the public health officials will all need to be consulted as part of the application process.” (Yikes! This is certainly going to add millions to government spending, just in the bureaucracy itself.)

In addition to consultations, applicants are also required to present data on overdose deaths and drug use, potential impact on public safety, and a description of a centre’s administrative procedures.

These are all required to receive an exemption from Canada’s Controlled Drug and Substances Act, which is granted by Health Canada. The bill, C-65, states that the minister will only grant exemptions in “exceptional circumstances.” (Double-talk for ‘you can apply but you’ll probably never get approved.)

Harper’s “war on drugs” is following the same problem-filled and failure-filled road of the United States and other countries that have tried the “war on drugs” approach, and those same countries have found their “war on drugs” extremely costly to the public purse, ineffective, and utterly useless.

Harper & Aglukkaq are 30 years behind the times, and acting like they are having a ‘war on sanity’.

Why on earth are Harper and Aglukkag adding another bureaucratic layer filled with paperwork, additional expenses, time delays, while denying scientific evidence proving safe injection sites already protect communities and ignoring the Supreme Court of Canada?

Instead of having a ‘war on drugs’ the Harper government should have a ‘war on spending by politicians and senators’.

News articles related to this new Act:

One, Two, Three, Coastal Health statement regarding new Act.

How to destroy the future. Noam Chomsky.

Noam Chomsky, the man who brought us “Manufacturing Consent”, wrote a piece for the Guardian titled “How to destroy the future”. I felt it was worthwhile sharing the link with you.

I was in Broadcast Journalism in the 1980′s when Noam Chomsky wrote “Manufacturing Consent”. When I attended the next Radio/Television News Directors Association convention (in Kansas City?) I had to purchase a t-shirt for a publishing friend of mine to go along with Chomsky’s book I was giving him. The t-shirt was inscribed “Freedom of the Press belongs to those who own one”. I got him three t’s. He loved them all; the t’s and the book.

For readers unfamiliar with Noam’s credentials: Noam is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, historian, political critic, and activist. According to Wikipedia (yeah, I know about the reliability of Wikipedia), He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. According to the Arts and Humanities Citation Index in 1992, Chomsky was cited as a source more often than any other living scholar from 1980 to 1992, and was the eighth most cited source overall. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and he was voted the “world’s top public intellectual” in a 2005 poll.

In the Guardian article Noam writes about political willingness to race towards destruction. You may read the article here.

Is this a terrible interview from Australia or what?

I was recently interviewed for a blog from Australia. I turn down most requests for interviews as I’ve found interviews produce little return for the interviewee, but do spread the word about the interviewer site. Likely this interview will do the same.

The interview doesn’t tell you much about myself, but then I knew it wouldn’t before I wrote it. Well, to be honest I didn’t write the whole interview. I just answered the prepared questions emailed to me.

Also, at the time of this post, my blog isn’t listed in the interviewers “My Favorite Sites” link. After failing to find my blog listed in “My Favorite Sites” I knew I was in trouble. I was hoping I might make some new connections from Australia, a country at the top of my list for visiting when I make my fortune.

My interview was published on a weekend, which, according to the stats for my site during the past 3 years, has the fewest visitors per day to my blog. True to form, the interview didn’t make a blip on the usual number of visitors per day on a weekend. I thought it might have increased visitors for Sunday, as it is Monday in Australia, but it didn’t. I’ll have to see if it makes any difference during the next day or two.

Here is the link to my interview, which you may enjoy reading it and seeing for yourself if it is a terrible interview. Remember, I wrote it.

Oh, by the way, you can help me visit Australia which each 99 cent purchase of my wonderful humor ebook “Buy This Book. Make Me A Millionaire“,

available at Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, WHSmith, and other reputable online bookstores around the world.

Who taught children at Lynn Valley – Sea to Sky Heritage Fair? Parents should know.

Parents with young children should know who is teaching their children at local festivals, art classes, or other public events. But does a parent really know who their children are meeting?

For that matter, how much research on instructors do festival organizers, art class organizers, or other public bodies do before entrusting children to the people they’ve hired?

I believe parents have the right to know who is teaching their child or children, and believe parents should be clearly told by organizers who the instructors are. Far too many times I’ve seen events listed without the name of the instructor.

It would be best for all concerned if public event organizers advertised the names of instructors or participants at public events so parents know with whom their children are coming into contact.

For example, on May 10, 2013, the Lynn Valley Main Library and Village the Sea-to-Sky Heritage Fair was held. One of the events was Heritage Hat making. No name was given.

The person conducting the Heritage Hat making may be good at what he/she does, but what does a parent know about that person?  How does a parent find out who is teaching their child or children if no names are given?

Would a parent feel any different about their child/children being taught Heritage Hat making if the person doing the instruction was a known dog-killer and liar?

Would a parent feel any different about the person teaching their child/children if a parent knew a letter to the BCSCPA warned them of a dog-killer who lied to veterinarian in order to have a family pet put down?

Perhaps such knowledge wouldn’t make a difference to a parent. Perhaps such knowledge wouldn’t make a difference to an event organized by a public body for something like the Sea-to-Sky Heritage Fair.

Maybe this year the Sea-to-Sky Heritage Fair organizers didn’t hire a known dog-killer and liar named Liz Summerfield, who also teaches puppetry, puppet making, papier mache, and other arts related crafts around BC, for this Heritage Hat making session. But how would a parent know if an organization doesn’t advertise who the instructors are?

The Sea-to-Sky Heritage Fair hired Liz in 2012, so perhaps they hired her again. Who knows?

I urge all parents to contact event organizers and ask them who is teaching their children if the instructors name is not known. I also urge parents to google an instructors name before allowing your children to attend public events.

It is only with full disclosure, of instructors or participants, by the organizers of an event that a parent can make a decision as to who to entrust their child or children.

Class-action suit launched against Penquin and Author Solutions

Penguin and Author Solutions sued for deceptive practices in a class-action case, according to an article in Forbes.

“The suit, which seeks class action status, alleges that Author Solutions misrepresents itself, luring authors in with claims that its books can compete with “traditional publishers,” offering “greater speed, higher royalties, and more control for its authors.” The company then profits from “fraudulent” practices, the complaint alleges, including “delaying publication, publishing manuscripts with errors to generate fees, and selling worthless services, or services that fail to accomplish what they promise.” The suit also alleges that Author Solutions fails to pay its authors the royalties they are due.

Publishers Weekly reports that the suit has been filed in the Southern District of New York and will be heard by Judge Denise Cote, who is current hearing the ebook price-fixing case.

These are serious allegations and it seems very likely that this class suit will grow as more authors hear about it. In a ‘prepared statement’ quoted by Publishers Weekly, Author Solutions says that it has worked with 170,000 authors, a large pool from which to draw more aggrieved writers. But with the Science Fiction Writers of America one of the most vocal critics of Author Solutions, this can’t just be written off as the whinings of a few disgruntled amateurs.

Authors who have had or have works published by Author Solutions or one of its many publishing arms such as iUniverse, AuthorHouse, Xlibris, Trafford and Palibrio as well as media companies FuseFrame, PitchFest, Author Learning Center and BookTango and wish to join the class-action lawsuit may contact the lawyers representing authors.

Link to Forbes article.

Lawsuit complaint, in PDF.

More pics of dogs

These pictures were emailed to me, and I have no idea who took them or if there are copyrights to any one of them. I’m sharing them with you, and perhaps you may know who took them or added words to them.