if you throw the liberal philosophy and rhetoric about property rights out the window (and this is especially necessary in canada, where property rights are only weakly recognized by common law, and have no standing whatsoever at a constitutional level, being explicitly rejected by parliament (perhaps for political reasons, but nonetheless) repeatedly), the way "buying" property works in reality is something that is basically still feudal in nature.

the proposed constitutional amendment (which the conservatives actually voted down, afraid it was going to create social rights) was itself more or less useless. it said something like "nobody should be deprived of property, unless we say so - in which case we agree to compensate them for it". it was never worded in a way that allowed for real property rights, it was more of a right of compensation for state infringement on property. and, in truth that's what already exists in case law. the proposed, and defeated, amendment was not really meaningful, except to legislate existing case law.

the legal owner of every inch of property in canada (including virtually all native land reserves and virtually everything we refer to as "private property") is the crown, which in canada since 1981 (at the latest possible interpretation date) is legally considered to mean the federal government, to the chagrin of certain groups, but legally so nonetheless. the crown has split this giant area of land up into a very large number of fiefs, which it retains ownership of but passes certain privileges off in the form of various titles. the most common type of fief in the former british empire is the fee simple. fee simple is a title that allows the owner of the title (not the owner of the land) to develop the land in certain ways in exchange for a yearly rental fee, which we refer to as a property tax. actual ownership of land in canada is called allodial title, which is unheard of - it only exists in theory, as an abstract possibility.

see, this is where the liberal literature about property gets really confusing, which reduces to an educational fail. i mean, it's what they teach us in schools, so it's what people think is accurate. there's this widespread misunderstanding that property owners (note the language, which is suggestive) ultimately allodially own a piece of property, and that taxes and regulations on that property are consequently some kind of invasion of freedom. but this interpretation is purely projective. it's what liberals WANT to be true, but it has essentially no legal or traditional basis of any kind whatsoever in canada. it is really just simply *wrong* to try and understand property like this. if it's what you want, then get a gun and start a militia, because it's the only way you're going to get it. personally, i'm not much of a fan of understanding property like this. i'd rather talk about social ownership than private ownership.

but, neither of these things exist in canada. in reality, the crown owns the land, and the taxes paid are a yearly type of rent to use it, subject to the conditions laid out in laws (which are the rental agreements, and dictated by the state).

the truth is that this is the general form of rights in canada, and it may actually be the smarter way to do it, despite appearing weaker.

our rights are all of the form:

"all canadians have this right, unless we take it away, in which case we agree to compensate for it."

rather than american rights which are just generally of the form:

"all americans have this right."

...which *actually means*

"all americans have this right, unless we decide otherwise, in which case you're fucked."

the rule of law is another liberal fantasy that comes off as particularly hilarious when you look at the actual historical record.

but this isn't yet another anarchist rant....

see, again: i'm not getting malice. he's legitimately interested in "getting it to code". and, the idea that recycling air between apartments is not a good one did make sense once i pointed it out: we're talking disease, smell, smoke, food, sound and anything and everything else going through the vents. he seemed to be most concerned about the value of the apartment given that change, and it alone might be enough to get him to patch the holes back up.

but, i'm still not sure he's getting the abstraction that this is an apartment and not a home. running through the fire code, it seemed to be that the regulations become increasingly strict depending on how many people are involved - which is itself just flat out stupid, but it reflects the (very stupid) dominant ideology in capitalism about risk and consequence.

if you own a detached house with one occupant (probably you), there are almost no rules about where to put the furnace. as a single occupant, you're allowed to take on as much risk as you'd want. risk to the neighbours doesn't seem to be factored in.

but, as the size of the apartment grows and the people that the landlord is taking risks *on behalf of* increases, the regulations increase. in other words, the legal reason he can't put a furnace in the kitchen is because he's not allowed to take that risk on my behalf (and the behalf of the other tenants).
but, i can't explain it like that because i'll be asked to waive the risk. it'll be viewed as negotiable. i don't own the risk, myself, it's collective in the building. i suppose the building could vote on it, but i'm more interested in what the fire code expert says about the nature of the risk.

he just kept going back to "normally, in a house..." and "the house code says..", despite repeatedly pointing out that these aren't the right codes.

but it's not malicious. he wants it done right, too.

it's all the same cultural themes as at the end of the clinton administration. techno. emo. ufos. these things actually have something in common. if you don't think the economy is planned, you're not paying attention. but note that the planners do not believe in democracy; the social engineering is being pushed down from above, and it's not a utopian vision. this future has a new religion in it, with new value systems, but it's designed to uphold the status quo rather than abolish it.

it's the type of thing people fear the republicans are scheming up. but, that's the democratic plan, which seems to have just been rebooted with obama without so much as a thought. it's absolute clinton redux. the republicans don't even care anymore, the democrats do everything the business class wants anyways, so they're just happy to hold the office every few years to cut their own taxes.

one of the more surreal conversations i've stumbled upon in relation to this was actually from peter gabriel, who very coyly suggested that the social and political messaging behind his art was to create a globalized culture, and there was some kind of structure underlying it. well, if the nwo sounds like passion, i must say that, i, for one, welcome our new kosmische overlords.

not to drag the nwo scare tactics out. we may end up ruled by computerized aliens, but no intelligent person is going to actually believe it's anything more than a front. these guys aren't marxists; they're not even on the left side of capitalism. it's fascists across the board, right now. and global bodies like the un remain the only way to stop them.

if you want to stop them. it's a hard road from a to b, but we may require a long period of horrific global governance to reach a state of communism.

i mean, things aren't working out so well at the moment.

substantial fire across the street. seems to be contained, but it just reinforces my point that fires happen and we have fire regulations that are designed by experts in order to minimize the risk of them happening. ideally, people would follow those regulations out of good sense. but, we're strange animals. we all think we're special, and that bad things can't happen to us. so, sometimes we need the community to help us in ensuring those risks are being properly minimized.

i don't know what caused that fire.

it would be unfair of me to suggest somebody fell asleep with a cigarette. but stats are stubborn things, it's a place where people drink early into the morning and it's something that sometimes happens when you decide not to go asleep on a friday night of heavy drinking (and whatever other type of consumption).

that's one of the reasons i always smoke outside.

deathtokoalas
cognitively speaking, elephants are very similar to young children. they're in this unique middle point of intelligence that makes torturing them amongst the most heinous crimes imaginable for the precise reason that most people would consider torturing a child to be worse than torturing an adult - full awareness, without full understanding.

this isn't a secondary issue. this shit just has to stop.

Fiona K
"Heinous," yes ...  Dude, have you looked at your online handle?  WTF.

deathtokoalas
elephants are intelligent creatures that we can look forward to cohabiting the universe with.

koalas are despicable in their revolting displays of cuteness, and must be abolished. 

Fiona K
Okay, DTK, you made me laugh. :)  I was pretty sure how you intended us to take your name, anyway.  I think, though, that elephants are not similar to young human children; they're far smarter. But even if they were only as smart as cats, or mice, most animal lovers would say exactly what you said.  Even one tortured elephant is too many.  Remember the story by Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas"?  It's the perfect explanation and indictment of any society that allows the torture of one living being so that everyone else can live happily.  I grew up with friends from New Delhi, and I am shocked that their home country can produce elephants and also produce sadists who don't understand the simplest concepts of rights.  DTK, thanks for writing; you really did make me laugh.

i sent out an email, but i didn't make any of these accusations. i pointed out 6.2.3.9 above, but suggested i didn't care (in the end, i don't, really - it's not a big enough issue to get pissy about). i also requested a fire inspection...

i'm trying to be non-confrontational and make it about safety. and it is. those laws are there for a reason, and, i mean, his brother is in there....

and, i don't want to kill the guy financially, but i find it very hard to believe that nobody thought to think that putting a gas furnace a few feet from a stove might not be a good idea. i kind of have to think that it was ignored on purpose. and, to that i have no response but "you should have done it rationally, if not legally, to begin with. sorry.".

i'm actually in a building that is somewhat of a hole in the building code, although i'm assuming it's well over 400 m^2. well, a quick calculation took it way over...

there's all kinds of rules about where you are and aren't supposed to put a furnace. it's supposed to be in a fire-separated room - ruling a kitchen out. unless it has "vertical separation" (which i doubt), in which case you can use a sprinkler. it's supposed to be a good distance away from bedrooms and living rooms, meaning where it is is no good. there's supposed to be separation in the flooring (which was just eliminated by cutting the holes through the floor).

and, you know, i just took a look through the building code act, and it's actually not even legal to recycle air between apartments.

6.2.3.9. Interconnection of Systems

(1) In a residential occupancy, air from one suite shall not be circulated to any other suite or to a public corridor or public stairway

not to mention fire issues with putting a furnace in the kitchen, now that i think about it.

i think i should deal with this by getting a safety inspector in here and focusing on that part of it.

concerns regarding the furnace

hi.

i'm sorry to make this long, but i've been thinking about the furnace all day and i've got a number of fairly serious concerns. i wish i had brought these up to you before things got underway, but it wasn't clear to me exactly what was going on and i sort of assumed things would be done in a way that was up to certain regulations.

i want to state up front that i'm not going to go running to any kind of regulatory body. i mean, it's an option that exists, but i'm not one to bring the government in to deal with issues lightheartedly - that's an extreme step that i would consider an absolute last resort. i'd probably move out before i did that. i think that would ruin the tenant-landlord relationship, which i'd rather keep cordial and positive. but, there's a lot of things about this that aren't sitting right with me.

to begin with, i want to point out that the idea of running an air vent between units is prohibited by ontario law.

6.2.3.9. Interconnection of Systems

(1) In a residential occupancy, air from one suite shall not be circulated to any other suite or to a public corridor or public stairway.

that's pretty clear, and it's exactly what the return systems are doing.

now, i want to be clear that this does not bother me, personally, as a tenant. i think it may concern your brother due to noise and temperature issues, as i don't keep regular hours and i'm likely to keep the windows open if the air gets out of hand. but, as a practical matter, i don't really care.

further, i've pointed out repeatedly that i plan to inhabit this unit for many years moving forwards, conditions allowing.

but, flaunting the law on that point is going to make the unit unrentable in the future should something happen that will force me to move out. i think it's worth questioning the wisdom of carrying on that path, for that reason.

further, the aesthetic changes attached to running open ducts and condensation pipes through here are dramatic. this is really a very nice unit. is it really worth damaging it's aesthetic quality to such an extreme point to save costs on electricity? put another way, what's the use of reducing the costs in the unit if you make it unmarketable (or drastically reduce it's market value) in the process of doing so?

i suppose the pipes could be drywalled over. but, that return vent is a more serious issue.

as your existing tenant, something i'm more seriously concerned about is fire code issues. i don't know the specifics about what exists upstairs, so i don't want to jump to any conclusions, but i've reviewed the fire code and i'm EXTREMELY SKEPTICAL that what exists upstairs is permitted by law. i'm sure you expect your brother to inhabit the unit for many years as well, but that's another issue that i think requires some thought.

my one request is as follows: as a matter of practicality regarding my safety as a tenant, i would request that you have the situation inspected to ensure that all fire codes are met. i think that's well within my rights as a tenant, and i think it's a more than reasonable (and not at all confrontational) request.

j

actually, i should point out that i don't know where the thermostat is. i'm assuming it's measuring the temperature at the cold air return (you'd think modern furnaces are high tech about this, but i don't know); if the thermostat is away from there (like in his living room, for example) then it shouldn't have that kind of feedback problem.

given that the furnace is in his kitchen, though (yes, for real, there's a furnace in the kitchen - good luck renting that unit in the future, too), it seems likely to me that the thermostat is probably connected directly to it....

i mean, i wouldn't expect them to chop through the walls to place the thermostat five feet away in the other room. it's probably mounted right on it.

so, installing the furnace meant putting in a cold air return that is basically an open hole in the floor.

1) noise. i'm a respectable tenant, i don't blast music or make any more noise than would be considered reasonable, but i'm often awake off hours and there's not any chance i'm going to modify that. that's a big part of what i consider to be freedom. so, he's going to hear me watching youtube or making spaghetti at 4:00 am. *shrug*. there wasn't a problem until they drilled a hole in the floor...

2) air conditioning. i like to acclimatize myself. he seems to like the air on full blast. i'm not going to freeze down here, i'm going to open the window and let the heat in. and, the hot air is going to rise, meaning his air isn't going to work the way he wants it to. *shrug*.

3) i don't have any plans to move anywhere, but if they get pissy about the noise or the windows? good luck renting this to somebody else with a hole in the floor and pipes moving out every which way. i don't care, myself, i'm interested in the amount of space down here and not what it looks like, but what they're doing is irreversibly aesthetically damaging to the property. this was a nice unit, but we're talking about open furnace ducts on the ceilings (like you'd see in an unfinished basement) and a condensation pipe running open through the bathroom and drilled through the tiles into the concrete. it's actually a good thing for them that i don't care, that i've lived in half-finished basements most of my life, because just about anybody else would immediately move out. it makes it more like i'm renting somebody's basement than living in an apartment complex, which i think is how the landlord is more or less interpreting the arrangement.

again: i don't have any plans to move anywhere. i'm just going to make the adjustments i need, and the other tenants will have to deal with it. this simply isn't likely to work out well for the tenant upstairs, who happens to be the landlord's brother. and i'm not sure what their next step is, or if they even have one. i mean, they can't curfew me or tell me to close the windows...

i should point out that the furnace came in as plan b. the initial plan was to put a heat pump in.

but, over a very long email exchange, i was eventually able to explain to him that heat pumps don't work in canadian winters - that, in canada, a heat pump is functionally an air conditioner with an electric coil attached to it, and he'd just be wasting thousands of dollars. but, if i wasn't vigilant about it...

on the one hand, he's a good landlord. he's attentive. and he gives a fuck.

but i'm slowly concluding that he's just not that sharp.

and, you know, i wish i had done some research on this, or they had run their plans by me, because, looking at it, i'm more or less convinced that the way they've got it installed is basically just going to send the hot air back up through the return. when you add the cost of gas to the cost of electricity, it's going to cost him more than it would have if he didn't do anything at all. and, that's plus the cost of installing the thing....

again: there's no malice. and the idea of trying to reduce cost is reasonable.

but everything about the way it's being done is flat out stupid.

i mean, the first obviously dumb thing about this is that they put the furnace at ground level. who does that? the (unstated but obvious) reason is he wanted his brother to control the thermostat. but it doesn't make any sense to think you can heat a basement from the floor above it. the cold air returns on the furnace are going to pick the hot air up, which is likely going to affect the thermostat reading - because it's going to think it's warmer upstairs than it actually is, due to all the hot air coming up. meanwhile, i'm going to continue using electric heat (because the hot air won't distribute well down here from the ceiling), and that's *also* going to heat the cold air return, further reducing the efficiency.

my best guess is that he'll probably react by turning it up higher, correctly realizing it doesn't work but thinking the solution is to set the thermostat to 30. but, it's not going to make a difference, because the hotter it blows out through the ceiling down here, the hotter it comes in to the return. turning it up is going to actually turn it OFF.

i'd like to laugh, but it's more sad than funny.

i took physics beyond grade 13, but it was only required up to grade 10. the only thermodynamics they bothered with was the conservation laws. they didn't even introduce newton's laws until grade 12 - an elective course. i don't know how i remember that....

i guess this is what happens when your education system sucks.

you want to put the returns as low as possible, ideally on the floor of the basement. if you must put the furnace on the second floor, and want to heat the basement, the last thing you want to do is cut a hole in the floor for a return. you want that heat pumping downwards to have as difficult a time as is possible getting back up. it would consequently make more sense to INSULATE the floor...

i can't imagine the guys that installed it don't know that. well, maybe they don't....because who puts a furnace at ground level?

but, i'm sort of wondering if the installers are maybe stabbing him in the back for some reason.

again: i'm not the one that's going to suffer. i should just get some popcorn and relax...

re: those skips i was fighting with....

it does seem to be a directory issue after all, and i'm not sure why what i did fixed it anymore. i just tried to move the entire project to a different directory, and the skips came back. undoing the process (through the menu) fixed it, thankfully. i have a hunch just copying it back wouldn't have.

after going through all the checks i did, i have to conclude it's a problem with the cubase software. this is an old version - sx 3, from late 2005. i couldn't imagine it not getting fixed. but i don't really know what it's doing that would cause this.

i've learned the lesson, though - don't change the directory.

of course, that's not at all feasible to actually hold to. i have to copy to create alternate mixes. i'm also going to want to back these files up when i'm done. i'll have to experiment with this to see what happens and ways to fix it other than re-rendering the freeze tracks.

fuck this.

tell the extreme minority of anti-pot puritans to vote conservative. trudeau is only running out in front due to the incompetence and unpopularity of both of his opponents.

if he was smart, he'd jump all over this. marijuana legalization is probably the only populist issue available for any candidate to run on at this point.

http://news.ca.msn.com/top-stories/marc-emery-the-prince-of-pot-may-be-a-liability-for-the-liberals

the polls are overwhelmingly in favour of full legalization.

it's not just some fringe of anarchists. fiscal conservatives understand it's a waste of money all the way through. civil libertarians, who traditionally vote liberal in canada, have a lot of arguments. progressives want the tax revenue.

it's across the spectrum, there's really no opposition outside of the christian right.

comparing emery to a snowden or a morgantaler is a hefty exaggeration, but he will eventually be pardoned and get a state apology.

i think this is worth watching, although i haven't seen the alperovitz section yet.

specifically, richard wolff lays out the reality of the situation fairly well. that's the part i think is worth watching.

unfortunately, i think he's still a little too tied to historical materialism. the technology is moving too fast for workplace communes to be an answer for the future; what he's describing was an answer for the 70s or 80s, before it became so abundantly clear that the future is in automation. in fact, some of the production is moving back here, but it's being tied to almost workerless factories. how do we talk about workplace democracy in the future, when the factories of the future don't have workers in them?

it brings us back to the macro, in a way that skips that socialist stage. if we're to have automated factories, they should neither be owned by capitalists nor by phantom workers but by society itself.

what that means is talking about operating at cost, and taking the surplus out of the equation altogether.

so, it's worth watching. but, i'm still awaiting the answer to the question i posed several years ago. nobody else seems to be thinking like this.

if markets were the way to maximize individual freedom in an agrarian economy, and socialism was the way to maximize individual freedom in an industrial economy, what is the way to maximize individual freedom in a post-industrial, automated, computerized economy?

the best answer i have is full communism. but i don't know how to get there, either.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl2Yx6ciFUc

well, somebody's studied it.

i don't currently have the time or interest to review the literature, but this is quick survey.

http://www.demneuropsy.com.br/imageBank/PDF/v4n4a05.pdf

it's funny how, the more a piece is practiced, time begins to slow down. i wonder if anybody's really studied this...

it's just perception, of course. but time is weird. relativity theory suggests (and suggests is the right word. the experiments that supposedly uphold this part of it are kind of weak. for example, they sent a plane around the earth a few times and noticed the clocks came back differently, in a way that sort of verified einstein's predictions. but, in fact, it was in the margin of error. i don't doubt einstein was on to something, and it's not like i found an error in the math or anything, but i'm a little iffy on some of the assumptions. relativity theory is an axiomatic system, built at the precise moment that axiomatic systems were being abandoned as unreliable. so, this is a perilous way to build a theory up. any future corrections to the axioms, and they're perpetually inevitable, may drastically alter the conclusions.) that time is not as constant as we perceive it as, but we're not accelerating to fractions of the speed of light very often, either, so it's not really wrong to think of it as a constant in day-to-day non-experimental life. i mean, playing my guitar isn't anything like synchronizing satellites.

but, there's no question that an ant or a fly must perceive of time as faster than we do. i mean, flies wouldn't be so hard to catch, otherwise. i guess it's just simple physics if you think about it: shorter paths for the electricity to follow. and it's true that insects are roughly comparable to primitive robots in terms of consciousness, it's just action/reaction, so that's not a totally useful comparison. but, if we could somehow be the proverbial fly on the wall, we would probably have difficulty understanding what was being said, because the waveforms would come in to us as slowed down, elongated messes. i don't even know if flies can "hear" or not...well, i guess they get vibrations of some sort but i don't know if that's actually sound or just noise.

something like that seems to happen when getting locked into the groove of an instrument. after a while, playing at 360 seems like playing at 250. it's not just a question of getting the mechanics right, it's the entire computation process. at first, the notes are blurry and it's difficult to think and play at the same time, but eventually the separation of the notes is as clear as it is at slower tempos and the ability to process the whole thing - finger movements, next notes, etc - slows down as well.

and i'm wondering if it might have something to do with higher aptitude to do various mental tasks amongst musicians. i mean, i'm not actually modifying time. my guitar is not a frame of reference. i'm not increasing my velocity. it must be that i'm thinking faster, getting my brain to work at a faster speed. physically, that would have to be synapses being built - that's what it *means* to think faster, right? to have more synapses, shorter paths, faster electrical responses. maybe the brain reuses those for math problems...

i'm rambling, just thinking out loud. but it really is remarkable how we're able to lock in and change that perception of time, whether it's the result of increasing transmission speed or something else.

there's this unfortunate tendency recently to think of intelligence as something genetic, but the brain is a highly plastic organ that is constantly changing with experience.

your current brain is not the brain you were born with. it's a highly individualized culture of cells that was built solely for you as a reaction to the experiences you've had in your life.

and it will continue changing for as long as you live.

a very odd structure has appeared on my front lawn.

it appears to be an electronic, flashing traffic sign asking drivers to slow down because it's a residential area. but, i've never seen anybody speeding through there. in fact, i'd say i see a car drive up marion and through that intersection about once a week. the cross street at cataraqui gets much more traffic, but there's basically nowhere to go down marion unless you live there, and there's actually only one house facing that way (marion is just full of a lot of large backyards that are parallel to it) so nobody even lives there. it's like placing a stop sign in a dead-end.

i suspect it's a camera. but, i'm not sure why they're being so low tech about it.

maybe they're frustrated by my rejection of mobile devices.

the reality is that they're not going to pick up anything interesting.

i seem to have cut my finger without noticing, and now there's blood everywhere. i don't think i've ever done that before. like, i spent five minutes trying to figure out where the blood was coming from, and it just kept coming. i thought it was my nose. i thought i was going crazy, or having some kind of stigmata event or something.

i must have cut it when i was making lunch. i washed some strawberries and let them dry in the sink. then i made a smoothie and a tomato sandwich, and went and watched the beginning of greenwald v. dershowitz while i was eating. i then put the dishes in the other side of the sink and picked up the paper towels from the top of the fridge to rip two sheets off to dry the strawberries. i find they keep best if you get the excess moisture off of them and then transfer them to tupperware, so i lightly dry them in the paper towel. i then did the dishes, and went back to get another paper towel sheet to wipe a sneeze off the floor and noticed the roll was full of blood. it looked downright grizzly, soaked in through a few sheets. i thought it must be something other than blood, but hadn't yet decided on if it was most likely to be tomato juice or hot sauce or strawberry juice...i mean, i *knew* it was blood, but it didn't make sense that it was blood, so it must have been something else, and it would be determined in time.

so, i went into the bathroom to get some toilet paper to blow my nose and there's blood on the toilet paper roll, too. now, i'm freaking out. checked my nose. no. was there somebody in here? is it just spontaneously appearing? did i get bit by something? am i seriously hurt, but in shock and can't tell? getting paranoid...

....but then i realized it was my finger, after checking over my hand several times.

i couldn't feel it at all. bizarre.

BUT

that also means my guitar calluses are back where they belong. which is good news.

i don't think it was deep. it only took a minute to clot with pressure applied, and there isn't even a scab. but, that was an unsettling experience, to say the least.

i must have been bleeding for a good ten-twenty minutes, but i can't find a trail, either, oddly.

so, the landlord is putting a furnace in here. apparently, the electric coils are expensive, and he's concerned electricity is going to go through the roof. which it no doubt will. we made a huge error in privatizing the grid to market rates, and it's leading to this sort of backwardsness.

i mean, i guess natural gas isn't as bad as oil, but a smart green policy would be encouraging people to move away from fossil fuels, not towards them as a less expensive option. from an environmental standpoint, hydro powered coils ought to be what's being strived for. and, there's not any good reason for these electricity spikes other than greed resulting from private ownership. hydro isn't expensive to operate, it just runs. it should be way cheaper than gas.

so, this is a step backwards, and is the direct result of state policy. whether we're talking of renationalizing the grid, or putting caps on prices, or whatever else, the guy *at the least* shouldn't be being pushed in the wrong direction due to costs. the state *should* be incentivizing him towards the greener choice, but at the least shouldn't be pushing him towards the less green option.

see, i can't and won't argue with the guy. i know the price difference. he's not running this for profit, he's just trying to take care of his family. he's doing what he's got to do. i blame the state for forcing him to do it to break even.

it's almost like the market has set itself up to provide cleaner, hydro energy as a higher end option. if you want to be responsible and reduce emissions, you'll have to pay for it! they've turned it into a fucking product; it's a price pyramid, instead of a social policy. but how could we expect different? and how can we expect a different future without addressing the economic screw-up?

it's just absolutely backwards.

directions for pedestrians wishing to cross the ambassador bridge

To: contact@cbsa.gc.ca

hi.

i have a nexus interview scheduled on july 17, and i've been having a hard time contacting somebody to ask for pedestrian directions over the ambassador bridge. i have never crossed the bridge before, but i'm aware that they do not allow people to cross by foot. the only information available in the directions is by car, so i don't know how i'm going to get across to the enrolment centre.

i do not own a vehicle, or even have a driver's license.

is there a place on the canadian side i can meet somebody at? if so, where? will i be allowed to cross under the tunnel (which is where i would normally cross, via shuttle) and walk along the river to the enrollment centre?

will i be forced to take a taxi? will i even be allowed to take a taxi?

j

if you follow the logic in the statement he made last year about it being contingent on a state department review, the reality is that he has already approved the pipeline. and, in fact, it's already pumping. he's just waiting for the right political moment to announce it.

you have to understand that this is a national security issue. the oil is going to china. and, what does the united states focus it's entire foreign policy around? controlling the oil supply. this isn't an economic argument. environmentalists are trying to engage in a debate about the ecological problems, while correcting people on the economic value, but they're missing the point. from the government's perspective, it's not about this...

if canada doesn't ship it through the united states, it's going to be shipping it through british columbia, which is a national security problem because it's draining resources out of an area it considers it's backyard and towards a country it considers it's dominant rival. the military will not allow that to happen. the oil is going through the united states, and harper is going to be removed if he throws any wrenches into it. but, he's not actually throwing wrenches into it. the terms of conditions for the bc pipeline are going to take a decade to work out, the courts are going to slow it down, and by then the oil will be pumping from the south. so, harper can go to his chinese investors and say his hands are tied. it's no accident...

....because if they pump the oil through the united states, the military maintains control over it, including the ability to block export in the event of sanctions or war. this is what is going to happen whether anybody likes it or not.

it's also the reason canada is not allowed to build refineries, or airplanes or anything else. that would provide us with too much independence.

he'll probably announce it after the midterms, but he might wait as long as the end of his term, or even dump it off to a republican successor, if the politics allow for it.

line 9 goes through the state of michigan (allowing the americans to block the line in case of sanctions or war against china) and has a proposed terminal in portland, maine - giving them ultimate control over exports.

http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/06/13/if_keystone_gets_nixed_canadian_pipeline_operators_have_a_plan_b_olive.html

this is about the americans controlling the supply, and harper being stuck in a tug-of-war between chinese buyers wanting to control it and the americans seeing that as a security threat.

for a long time, i was worried that harper was giving in to those chinese interests and possibly putting western canada under threat of american occupation.

thankfully, he seems to have stepped back from the brink.

if he wanted the western pipelines built, he wouldn't have approved them with hundreds of conditions.

it's going to be decades before anything gets done, and by then the other lines will be operational. it's not worth the cost. they won't be built.

but, what harper can do now is go to his chinese investors and say his hands are tied. which is true. it's just that they're not tied by regulators, they're tied by the americans.

the oil is already pumping south through the keystone. if obama doesn't approve the wider pipe, his successor will. it's a matter of time.

in the mean time, the line 9 will ship it through michigan and out to maine.

it's all about controlling the oil supply. we know that this is what the americans spend billions on their military to do, but we think of ourselves as special.

there's nothing more obvious than that the americans will insist they are in control. and it seems to be that what that means is having the oil pumped through their borders.

so, keystone is allowed because it goes through the us. line 9 is allowed because it goes through the us. the western pipelines get drowned in bureaucracy because they don't go through the us. and the chinese get stuck with an unstable investment.

that's the cost of doing business in the shadow of the elephant.

and it has nothing to do with ecological concerns.

so, my nightly roach sightings have recently been replaced by nightly centipede sightings. i haven't seen a roach in almost a month. together, this suggests that i'm winning, but i know this species is seasonal and i can't really make any conclusions until i haven't seen one an entire year. i don't know if there are any eggs anywhere, or what's going to happen when they hatch if there are. you can't really spray the eggs, you have to actually go find them, and i simply can't get in under the pipes or kitchen counter to do that. so, it's a waiting, reacting game...

see, the centipedes (i've identified at least two separate ones) are out looking for food, and it seems like they're having a hard time finding any. i haven't seen any spiders around, either - i suspect the centipedes ate them all. the centipedes have been spotted in unusual places, where they're not likely to find much to eat. what this tells me is that there isn't any food left in the more likely places, so they're getting desperate and scouring areas they wouldn't otherwise bother with. i guess they'll have to leave or die, and at that point the process of getting the insects out of here will be finished. as centipedes eat all the other bugs, it's a good idea to keep them around until it's clear the other bugs are gone, then get rid of them - or keep a few around to prevent the others from coming back.

the thing i'm concerned about is that they might leave or starve before the eggs hatch, i.e. that the eggs might outlast the centipedes. so, i'm toying with the idea of bringing them some dead spiders.

but, i'm worried that if i start feeding them they'll become reliant on it. "don't feed the animals". well, yeah, don't. it would also sort of suck if they started getting a little too friendly and decided they want to snuggle or something. they *do* bite, when they're big, and i don't really want them hanging out around my pillow. i need them to hunt for me, and i'd rather if they kept a mild fear of me.

my sun room has some spiders in it, but the webs are full of termite-like things, so i don't really want to let them loose in there, either. i'll be cleaning the room up when i get a chair in there, probably in august. for now, i have a towel under the door to keep the area separate...

so, i dunno what the better thing to do is. i don't want them to die until i'm sure the roaches are out for good, but i don't want them to get too friendly or stop hunting, either.

although i should point out that the centipedes may actually eat the eggs. all i've found are anecdotes, though, nothing solid.

i think i'm going to hope this is true. i can't get in under those spots, but they can.

hopefully, they're out looking around for something else because they ate all the eggs already. meaning, the best thing to do is let them die off on their own....

yeah. decided.

so, i'm thinking i should apply for some kind of artist's grant. i just want to go down to odsp first and determine if i'm allowed to do that or not. it could conceivably provide me with another year or two, if the odsp gets cancelled. and, if i'm able to make enough progress, i could conceivably see myself putting the music aside within a year or two and focusing solely on writing and organizing. i've been preparing myself for this for some time now. the goal is to finish all the things i've left unfinished, and then make a decision about whether i want to carry on or not after that. i mean....yes, it's what i'd rather be doing. at the same time, i need to face reality that i'm not going to be able to find ways to allow myself to do this forever.

i've mentioned before that this is part of the reason i moved down here, to the center of canada's collapsing industrial base. it's a matter of time before the area has some serious homeless issues, brought on by mass joblessness. if i'm going to be organizing, i want to be organizing within this "lumpenproletariat", rather than within organized labour, who i've come to see as an obstacle in revolutionizing distribution to a more communistic approach. i really do not believe that organized labour has any revolutionary potential beyond increasing their own salaries, and i'm rather convinced that the corporate state has effectively derived ways to co-opt workers and keep them in line. i'm following the early anarchist thinkers in declaring organized labour a dead-end.

the only reason i need an odsp check instead of a welfare check is to house that studio. if i were to give up on this, i could see myself being relatively content bouncing around libraries with a laptop, sleeping in squats and spending all my time reading while i'm waiting for the shit to hit the fan. but, i know better than to plan beyond the immediate future, because that shit just never works out.

so, for now, i just need to focus on ways to pay the rent for another year or two. if odsp doesn't think i'm qualified, maybe the council for the arts might. and i'll go from there....

i posted this to the wrong profile. whatever. not like anybody in my facebook list really cares...

but the truth is, while i'd like to say i've entirely given up on trying to sell anything directly, the actual truth is that i never really made a serious effort to market any of it. i've played something like four open mic nights over almost twenty years. i've never even asked anybody for a show, because i know better than to think i have enough friends to fill up a bar, so why bother playing in an empty room? meanwhile, those bars get filled by social groups producing music that i consider to be nowhere near as interesting, which keeps me out of the social scenes i'd need to interact with.

and i realize i'm too old for that, now.

maybe i should take a marketing class, but what i've instead always been interested in focusing on is ways to take myself out of the game and just create, under some kind of fatalist conception that it will find an audience after i'm gone. i used to think i could find a day job and just create in my spare time, but i learned that's not really feasible - and i've since lost the ability to gain a day job, anyways, making it unrealistic to think in those terms.

a self-fulfilling prophecy, i suppose, brought on by an unshakable (if naive) belief that it will all work out. all i can do now is continue creating, and hope somebody finds some parts of it that they connect to in some way.

i just woke up, and i have to keep going back to the same point.

i've tried to avoid friendships with market advocates over the last few years by reducing them solely to intellectual opponents, but i've heard a lot of those arguments and they're hard to shake if you're insecure, as all artists have to be. they're also a part of day-to-day life, whether we choose to reject markets or not....

in the end, after all the arguments, the only important conclusion is this: how am i supposed to know what kind of reaction my larger, serious pieces are going to get in society at large when they've been heard by around 100 people, on average? and, that 100 number is relative to recent attempts to promote better through social media. for a long time, it was more like twenty people, most of them friends and relatives.

it just doesn't provide for a large enough sample. and, i know that's my fault (i guess) for not having the slightest idea of how to sell a product. but there's just simply no logical connection between being a good salesperson and being an interesting musician, despite requiring both skills to be a *successful* one.

i've been through this so many times. there's no use going through it again. i just wish my brain would fucking drop it already.

regarding corroborating sources, his books are well sourced.

you know, it's been a while since it's been clear if he's misinterpreting or ignoring questions.

the question about sutton is interesting. i'd imagine he's at least mildly familiar with him. and, i tend to direct conspiracy theorists to sutton (and quigley) rather than some of the more outlandish stuff out there. it's too bad he didn't answer it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx6Eo1k_QfI

that's not really a swastika, though. the geometry is similar, but it's a reflected mirror image. i mean, i don't want to get too sensational or silly, but it's kind of like the difference between the pentagram and the star of david. they look similar, but they mean different things.

those "inverted swastikas", which are thought to be a symbol for the sun, are important in hindu and buddhist religion right up to the present day and have been found in indo-european settlements across the eurasian steppes that date back to thousands of years ago. i don't see a reason to doubt that he's using it as a rabbit foot, but his ancestors would have found a more serious, spiritual use for it.

the symbol was also appropriated by christians during the christianization of the steppes and is used as a cross in some regions.

uploading the time machine (vst mix) to youtube

i've created a video for the vst mix.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtpW0Ve6t8A

original video taken from here without requesting permission:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNc-OzFhDnw

uploading the time machine (vst mix) to thru (final mix)

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated on july 5, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

the time machine (vst mix) (final mix)

this is the vst mix, which hooks up the constructed score to a series of vst instruments through the magic of midi sequencing and outputs the notes through various effects processors to create something approaching the sound of a live band.

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated on july 5, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

well, silly me. it seemed to be a latency issue, but this is weird and maybe something to take note of if you do these things.

with a bit more experimenting, it didn't seem to be any specific plugin. if i unfroze 2 or 3 of about ten running simultaneously, it would run fine. so, i'm back to cpu or ram. except that doesn't make sense because one freezes to open up cpu and ram.

i noticed that some of the frozen tracks were frozen at different latencies. the drums were frozen at 256, but i had to increase the latency in the process of finishing the thing, so i froze the bass at 736.
what i did to fix it was to go back and make sure everything was frozen at 256. then, when i played back at 736 it was smooth.

i'm not sure how that makes sense. maybe what was happening was that i was getting some kind of wave interference on the playback, due to the sample rate.

whatever it was, it's working now and i hope to get some work done today.

what i mean is that the files may have been out of phase, and what seemed like a stutter was actually a cancellation.

just a guess...

the time machine (vst mix) (third correction)

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 28, 2014 and updated on july 4, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

http://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/vst-mix-2

the time machine (soundblaster mix) (final mix)

this is a primitive mix, built up in noteworthy, that suffers from a slightly blurry drum sound due to everything being run through channel 10 in the soundcard synthesizer. specifically, i'd like to turn the snare down (because it blurs the toms) but it doesn't seem to be possible to do this. obviously, i've fixed this as i built more sophisticated mixes of the track. however, this is what the track sounded like on playback as i was actually arranging it....

written in early 2001. drastically rearranged in mid june, 2014. this render was initially created on june 23, 2014 and updated on july 4, 2014 to fix a minor error in transcription.

formatting this thing is really just a guess, but i can't figure out why else the corruption would be so random. the way i figure it is that either:

1) it goes looking for file blah.wav and finds a half dozen entries, then spits back something mangled.

2) that part of the drive is really badly fragmented, and it's not able to put the files together in real time without stuttering.

either way, i figure it can't hurt, but i'm going to need to copy the files off, format, scan, copy back and then defragment.

that'll likely take me to the end of the day. argh. but i don't want to lose the vst mix when i start redoing the new one.

i think something i can check is to see if it's doing the same thing from the other drive or not.

i'm actually going to right up and format the thing to clean out the partition table...

nope. now it's screwing up with other plugins, too.

i'm going to try a scandisk/defrag. this drive gets massive amounts of data copied to and from it. it almost sounds like it's getting confused with pointers. and, i keep creating and deleting files with the same name, so it's not off the wall.

i'm just going to back up first, though, because i already lost one drive of this type. the four drives are of the same type and age.

on second thought, it only happens when i copy the directory.

which is necessary.

it's gotta be some kind of screw up in memory management or something. i'm still blaming bandstand, but i don't think reinstalling will fix it. i'm going to try to copy first, then freeze. i suspect that will work.

.....aaaaaand, it turns out it was a plugin after all. the same skips were coming back, but turning off bandstand did it.

it's too bad this is the only general track 10 plugin i'm aware of because it's not the bestest. it was working before, so i see no reason to think a reinstall won't work.

but, fuck.

i actually have another hypothesis.

cubase seems to want to keep track of files when they're copied out of the directories. it may have gotten confused when i copied it over to the external drive. that would explain why they were both acting funny, and refreezing worked to get around it.

anyways, i'll be reuploading as soon as the a/b test has convinced me the files are the same, except for the Gb.

hrmmn.

turns out the file was corrupt, after all. the chopping went away by unfreezing and refreezing.

weird. wondering if it's the hard drive, now...

it's resolvable, no use in worrying about it.

i just want to clarify because people are going to say that doesn't make any sense, but it does. we're taught that ram disappears on a reboot, but it doesn't actually. it's just discarded and written over. reusing the information in ram just means going back to where it was and finding it.

so, all the os has to do to reuse the boot information in ram is make sure it never writes in the sector that it assigns for boot.

but, again, it's the cpu cache i'm hypothesizing about...

lol. this is actually a debate all over the internet.

from what i remember from vista support, modern versions of windows actually don't clear anything on a restart unless you force it to. i mean, it's not like it ever really *cleared* it anyways, it just deallocated it. there's a switch of some sort that can actually set everything to all 0s, and it can add several minutes to the rebooting time.

but, if you think about it for a minute, it's just a waste of cycles to rewrite everything on every boot. this is actually the reason that windows is faster on startup than it used to be - it actually doesn't push everything into ram on every boot-up like they teach you in your hardware class, it cuts out a space of ram and leaves it there for future use.

but i'm not sure if that applies to the last versions of xp or not. i'm running xp on modern hardware, so it's very fast on bootup and hard to really tell.

but, this is more to do with ram than cpu cache, and i don't think i'm having a ram issue.

well, the notes are fixed but now the output is stuttering.

it doesn't seem to be drivers, because it stutters at the same spots through multiple sound cards. and, the last track i was working on is also stuttering, so it doesn't seem to be the file, either. i reinstalled cubase to no avail. it might be a plugin, but it actually renders fine in quick mode so that doesn't really make sense. i think i've unfortunately actually reduced it to a processor issue, which is going to be very bad news if it becomes a serious problem.

for now, i'm going to leave the machine off for a bit, eat breakfast and try it again. i don't turn the machine off very often. it doesn't seem like it's overheating, but maybe it just needs a rest.

sending it out through a canned out isn't really a solution. i can hear the difference.

the thing is that this shouldn't really be a load issue. everything's frozen, and it was working fine before. i haven't touched anything. if it's overheating, it would have to be environmental. but it's not warm in here.

unfortunately, fighting with computers is part of being an electronic musician....

i don't really want to reinstall. i couldn't imagine what could have broken besides maybe a soundcard conflict. but i can't see how/why.

the one thing i can say i did was copy a large file over to an external drive, and that xp update has made the process slow. maybe the cache was jumbled up or something. i think that requires a hard rather than soft reset?

whatever. eat, then worry about it.

here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly
he got joo-joo eyeball, he one holy roller
he got hot air down to his knees
got to be a joker he just do what he please

Tammy Sanford-Banks
No, they do not need transgender Medicaid-they need to stop trying to be something they are not, and get a job. Medicaid is for needy people with real health problems, not for the reason that was given for Medicare now paying for sexual reassignment surgery, "they feel uncomfortable." Really??? Are they going to pay for skin lightening for the black that wants to be white? Are they going to start paying for whites to go tanning because they want to be dark? Are they going to pay for facelifts for the old who want to be young? Are they going to pay for breast implants for the small breasted who wants to be large breasted??? NO!!! They should not be paying for any of this. Payment should be made for things like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, accidental injury. Real actual medical problems, not helping people avoid accepting their lot in life and dealing with it. But, they'll get it. They'll have all this needless crap paid for by the government who already can't sustain what they are taking responsibility for, becoming this nanny state. And I must restate, get a fricking job and pay for your own needless "medical" crap.

ReliableInsider
Tammy, you can't deny basic healthcare to someone just because they're poor. 

Tammy Sanford-Banks
Gender confusion is not basic healthcare. They need mental healthcare. Medicaid is for basic healthcare of the poor, not to perpetuate freakdom.

ReliableInsider
The human population is diverse.  Some people are born with XY chromosomes and female bodies.  That's called Androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS).  These biological descriptions are not randomly chosen by people because they are crazy.  They're just the way these people are, from birth. 

Transgender girls often realize that they are girls starting when they are four or five years old.  It's not something the parent grooms the child into.  It's something the child informs the parent about.  

We have to allow people to be what they really are and trans women really are women.  And trans men really are men. 

Tammy Sanford-Banks
OMFG, please. Are you serious right now? Yes, obviously there are true medical situations where there are genetic defects. This all falls in line with the whole LGBT crap. Being a "man" or a "woman" here in America is one way of doing it. Let's look at gender in say, African tribe, where wearing a dress and make up isn't what makes someone a woman. If you have a man who THINKS he's really a woman, besides wearing a dress and make-up, what would be different in their day??? Nothing.

deathtokoalas
i don't usually reply to these sort of things, but i need to reply to this.

part of being transgendered means being unable to live properly in the gender role that correlates "naturally" with birth sex. i've transitioned fairly late in life, and need to stress how i was incapable of "being a man" in a social setting. i wasn't able to maintain many friendships with either gender, and found myself stuck to the bottom of the social hierarchy in the few jobs i was able to find.

on the one hand, it obviously doesn't affect the mechanics of the job, and the common-sense conservative will normally stop thinking about it there. what gender i identified as didn't affect whether i was able to pick up a phone and talk into it or not. obviously. however, it did affect how i was able to connect with clients on a face-to-face basis, how i was able to relate to colleagues and how i was able to exist within the workplace's hierarchy.

it's not as simple as "getting a haircut". it's a personality issue. the vast majority of jobs that exist - from waiting tables to flipping burgers to closing business deals - expect a certain level of "manliness" from men that i was not able to provide. as i was not able to provide that, i was routinely passed over for other candidates that were able to do so. nor, of course, was i able to compete for traditionally female gender roles, as much of it is appearance based and i was born with the wrong set of hormones.

whatever you want to derive the mismatch from, you have to understand that it is real. i was not able to fulfill a male gender role because i do not think, act or behave in a masculine fashion; i was not able to fulfill a female gender role because i did not have the physical attributes required to do so. without being able to find a role to fill, finding a job is very difficult.

if we want to be really strictly logical, that means i actually had two types of treatment available. i could either undergo psychological treatment to modify my personality so it was more traditionally masculine, or i could undergo hormone therapy to modify my appearance so that it was more traditionally feminine. i don't see any reason to think that the psychological treatment would be more effective or cost less money; to the contrary, studies have shown pretty strenuously that you can't really change somebody's personality. you can, on the other hand, change somebody's physical appearance.

it follows that, for me, and countless others, the hormone therapy is necessary to remove the obstacles that are preventing me from finding employment, because i was never going to find a stable job in a male role.

deathtokoalas
the comments here seem to suggest that it's a common view in america that one is not entitled to water unless they are a good slave. bad slaves are best left to dehydrate and die, as they are not producing anything for their masters.

you white racist dipshits are a bunch of fucking niggers.

John Galt
Just pay your bills and the water gets turned on.  Do you somehow feel that you can demand the labor of others without paying for that labor?

deathtokoalas
what does an automated system of water distribution have to do with labour?

and why do you think that automated system has the right to charge a price, or generate a profit?

the real issue is parasitic investors converting humans into profit generating machines, and denying them the necessities of existence if they don't contribute to that extractive process.

so, why do you think that these parasitic investors ought to have the right to force independent human beings into non-consensual labour (which is difficult to even find) in exchange for the things they need to survive?

there's a very simple fix: common ownership. if the people having their water shut off owned the system, nobody would be able to deny them of what they owned, and they would maintain access to what they are entitled to.

the crime here is in private ownership of goods that nobody should have the right to own, or be able to coerce people into forced labour in order to gain access to.

until we collectively pull our heads out of our asses and work towards collectivizing the various ways we produce things, we will continue to live under the slavery of market capitalism that forces us to work or die.

the reality is that the vast majority of employed people do nothing of any substantial value to society, and most of them are going to lose their jobs in their near future to automation.

but, we should look forward to this as a step forward in human progress and seize the opportunity that is finally available to us to truly be free.

but, we have to change how we think about labour, first.

and, john galt is not helping us do that. john galt is keeping us locked in a system that has failed us as workers, artists and inventors - while benefiting a select group of people, most of whom have never done an honest day of hard work in their whole lives.

crowbird213
Never worked, never will. What does your fantasy system do about population explosion by the dumbest among us? Keep feeding them? If the whole world naught into your fantasy, what effect would that have on your lifestyle. As the dumbest continue to over populate, what continued effect would that have on your lifestyle? Are you prepared to meet at the lowest common denominator? Before answering that last one, I want you to get an apartment where all those lovely poor live. Then get back to me.

deathtokoalas
i actually live just about as close to detroit as a canadian possibly could. it's a five minute walk to the tunnel under the detroit river....

i've only been over once, and it was to get my border clearance, which should (finally) show up in the mail this week. and i can state that windsor is not as bad as detroit, but that it does have all of the same underlying economic problems stemming from massive job losses due to massive automation. i live in what is one of the poorest parts of windsor, which is no doubt roughly comparable to some areas in detroit. and, i moved here specifically to exist in the area that has the highest potential to move beyond capitalism in the near future.

starting in august, i will be over to detroit fairly regularly.

the basis of the plotline underlying the film idiocracy is not scientifically valid: there's no correlation between intelligence and genetics. brilliant people will produce dumb children, and dumb people will produce brilliant children. it has more to do with the environment that the children are raised in.

i would consider both of my parents to be stupid people - especially my father, who was a flat out imbecile. but, i was raised with a focus on learning that i've kept up with and have consistently scored in the highest percentiles, while both of my parents would consistently score in the lowest. i'm not a statistical anomaly. you just can't draw those connections, it's a myth.

it's a standard anarchist hope that one of the effects of mass automation and collective ownership of production would be greater community involvement in educating kids (as well as a greater focus on art and education, in general). that kind of freedom from repetitive, dull employment is going to allow parents and other adults to spend more time with their children. to most of us anarchists, this focus on art and education is the entire purpose and value of collectivizing production and resources.

further, the solution to overpopulation issues lies in increasing access to abortion and contraceptives and tearing down religious taboos against their use. it doesn't have anything to do with who owns the resources, it has to do with ensuring that people have access to the tools they need to avoid pregnancies.

intelligence is largely a function of brain plasticity. genetics are certainly passed down, but intelligence is not something that is genetic. there was thinking along those lines in the previous century, but if you move beyond the popular press and popular media and into real journals, you'll see that brain plasticity is now understood as the dominant factor, which places environment as the sole consideration.

this is actually a really important thing to understand in constructing the nature of what human beings actually are. you have to begin thinking of your brain as a ball of plasma that is constructed not by a planned genetic code but by the sum of it's reactions to it's experiences. it's consequently not the same organ that you had when you were born, and it consequently will be an entirely different organ by the time you die. genes code for quantifiable traits, like eye colour and physical sex. despite what the popular press would have you believe, genes don't code for things that arise in our minds like intelligence, sexual orientation or moral value systems.

just as an aside...

the reason people push this "dna is a plan for our lives" hogwash is that it aligns well with the christian idea of "god's plan". it's the genetic equivalent of cavemen hanging out with dinosaurs. the difference is that it cuts a little deeper, and even respectable scientists consequently have difficulty separating the ideas. but the media is relentless in ways that no scientist ever would be because it's seen as bridging a divide.

the reality is that there's absolutely no evidence that there are genes that code for behaviour, cognition, orientation or anything else outside of the basic bio-chemical functioning of our bodies, and anybody that suggests that genes do code for these sorts of things is pushing pseudo-science.

it's chemistry, it's not the magic wand of god.

QuartuvLarry
Collectivism: from the same assholes who brought us the Soviet Union

deathtokoalas
actually, we're the assholes that loudly denounced marx when he was still alive, split the socialist international in half because we thought he was a homicidal lunatic, did everything we could to prevent the russian revolution and then died in several theatres (spain, ukraine, germany amongst others) trying to fight them off when they stamped us out with force.

this report is just bluntly crazy talk. completely disconnected from reality.

seems like a controlled "leak". but, this is smart strategy from the russians.

finally.

"to complete this transition"

kerry knows exactly what's going on. he's in absolute control of the crazies, and he's offering a peaceful transition if the iraqis choose it. otherwise, he'll unleash them on the city.

it's the same kind of tactics that genghis khan used to use.

in truth, they're not seriously planning any kind of military operation against isis. they've been pushing for maliki to get out. it's almost a threat to the iraqi government, but there's not anything the iraqi government can really do about it.

i'm not sure how this media narrative came up. that's a job for a detective of some sort. maybe, some media outlets just jumped to the conclusion, without having a solid understanding of who is funding isis. whatever it is, the state department seems to be running with it.

but, taking it a step back, the idea of providing air support for these groups in syria served exceedingly unpopular, with media images of genocide floating around and headlines asking why the fuck we're supporting al qaeda, all of a sudden. they can't stand up and say they're supporting isis.

so, instead, they say they're sending a few hundred "military planners" to iraq, and talk tough about not taking options off the table. but, it's a smokescreen....

the american goal is to take maliki out because he's too close to iran. the saudis are organizing it, but we're in agreement with the objective.

well, they should have thought about this before they invaded the falklands, eh?

they should seize it from the pope.

i don't think we can talk about hayek being wrong, because his predictions rely on the assumptions of ever increasing state ownership, and the new right stepped in right after he was done rambling and took steps to reduce state ownership, under fears of that serfdom developing (or, more realistically, just using it as an excuse to increase their own power).

when i have this argument, i don't tend to try and convince people that hayek was wrong, i try to point out that my opponents sound like they're stuck in 1973. it's ironic that the right-libertarians tend not to acknowledge that everything they want to see happen has been being put in motion, slowly, by the crony capitalists they're all after. then, when the result is more and more crony capitalism, they call for greater and greater privatization...

so, all you can do is look at the reality and say "well, we've been doing what you want for forty years and the results are exactly what you were trying to prevent. don't you think it's time to try something else, now?".

it creates a sort of irony. we are on the road to serfdom. by eliminating governance as anything but an organization that collects taxes and gives it to military, police and banks, we're recreating a two-class debt-based society that consists primarily of landowners and serfs. rather than push for universal education, we have student loans. rather than keep wages up at levels of inflation, we have a society of people with mortgages.

i'm not sure how hayek would correct the policies of the new right to be more in line with what he was saying.

yeah. that makes it clear who is really running the operation.

again: sneaky russian propaganda. i guess they realize they're not going to convince anybody pushing "conspiracy theories", so they spin the situation to make it look like the americans are incompetent.

in actuality, the americans are refusing to support the maliki government because they want it to be removed by isis. the only uncertainty is the level of co-ordination, but it seems to be rather high.

say what you will about where the republican base stands, but this proves that marketing is meaningless in the face of an educated populace and that those that are focusing on keeping money out of politics are not operating on the principles that were supposed to keep this machine running. they should, instead, be focusing on educating voters.

lol.

yeah, that's exactly what the people that own al jazeera want you to think.

actual funding source = people that own al jazeera.

it's going to be propaganda one way or the other. it's not up to the state to restrict it's propaganda, it's up to parents (and the children themselves) to ensure they get a broader-based education of events.

i don't often "laugh out loud", but finkelstein has a particularly effective style of observational comedy.

i get his argument, but i'm not sure the israelis or americans really want this to end. the israelis have been clear for decades that they're not going to allow a two-state solution. the uncomfortable corollary of this is the question of what exactly they plan on doing with the palestinians is, a question in which nobody wants to exist within the reality where it becomes necessary, and people consequently don't bring themselves to ask. surely, some sort of return will be allowed, or some kind of two-state understanding will be come to! but, neither of these things are going to happen, and the question is consequently pertinent, as difficult as it is.

and i think that's what the economy part of this is about. kerry is trying to set up an apartheid state, and perhaps this is because he knows it is the best thing the palestinians can hope for, and it seems to be being resisted by the israelis. this is implying more drastic answers to the question.

the best case scenario that the israelis will allow appears to be resettlement somewhere outside israel. they seem to want gaza to join egypt, to egypt's continuing refusal. they seem to want to expel the population of the west bank to jordan. integration isn't a serious option.

so, if kerry's plan relies on convincing the israelis to abandon this type of cleansing operation and integrate the palestinians as low wage workers, i don't foresee it being successful.

however, that doesn't make finkelstein's underlying logic go away. the west bank is almost full, and when it becomes full something is going to have to happen to all of these people that are never going home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7R8GyplfV8

but, aboriginal title is not sovereign land rights. it's just a special type of fief. and, the ruling states that the crown maintains veto over the process, in the end.

they've been doing this for years. it's all a smokescreen. and it's actually directed more at making white settlers feel good about themselves than it is towards any real aboriginal land rights.

of course, some aboriginal activists will want to spin it as positively as they can, under the misguided view that if they push hard enough then the courts will eventually give in. but, that's exactly what the system wants them to do.

just to clarify.

the way this will work now is like this:

1) the developer will seek consent. if granted, it will be recorded forever. this helps developers regarding ambiguities - it constructs a real contract out of the process.

2) if not granted, the province will declare that it's in the public interest and attack the first nations groups for not behaving in the public interest.

the difference is consequently merely that they're forcing the natives to sign contracts, to clarify the process.

so, stephen, is that a four-year plan or a five-year plan?

five-year plan, this time.

i may have voted for hillary ten years ago (i can't actually vote in the united states), and i supported her by default as the more left choice over obama (although there was incredible ignorance on the topic in '07) during the last primaries, but she's since proven herself as right-wing as obama. continuing with hillary would just be extending the bush administration into a fifth term.

she lost last time because the banks wouldn't support her. again: people were easily manipulated into being confused over the establishment candidate. obama was the establishment candidate, and he was run by the establishment to defeat hillary, who was rejected by the establishment.

i'm not expecting that hillary will be the establishment candidate this time, either. yes, she just spent the last six years trying to prove she's right-wing enough for office - and she's convinced me, but i doubt she's convinced wall street. i don't know who wall street is going to run to beat her, but they'll find some puppet or other and construct some outlandish media narrative.

but i'm hoping she's lost or will lose enough support that it won't matter. this is a woman who has been trying to break through the establishment for thirty years. she had some good ideas when she was younger, but she's shown clearly that she's not a reformer or a visionary but somebody that is willing to do exactly what she's told in order to advance her career. if she's the anti-establishment candidate, we're fucked.

rather, i'm hoping that a serious candidate will emerge out of the ground. now, i don't expect most people will learn from the obama debacle, but i was able to clearly see what was coming and so were many others. so, it's no surprise that obama carried the bush legacy forward. if you actually listened to him directly, rather than relying on media, you wouldn't have ever thought otherwise. what that *does* mean is that independent media should be able to play a role in debunking the establishment candidate when it appears.

further, this serious candidate isn't going to appear out of nowhere. the american left needs to get to work. it's running out of time....

i'm really fucking sick of this political message that we need to just accept fat people. i wouldn't care so much if resources were infinite, but they're not. so, markets are not able to solve anything (unless they can make resources infinite). every time a doctor is forced to treat somebody that lives like a fucking animal, it takes away resources from somebody that is more entitled to them. i'd be just as happy to round all these fucking pigs up, put them in a rocket and eject them into space.

it's true that people have a very hard time keeping the weight off. the report tries to gloss over this with the politically correct bullshit that it's a "mix of biological and social factors". what that means is that people go back to their old shitty lifestyles again, and deal with the consequences over again. the fact that they were able to lose weight in the first place clearly demonstrates that we're dealing with lifestyle and not biology. going back to it just means relapsing.

the conclusion is not that it's impossible to lose weight, but that most north americans are disgusting, vile creatures that cannot take care of their own health and deserve to be ground up and fed to cattle. that's the uncomfortable message that isn't getting out, and that reports like this are trying to obscure.

stop the bullshit. fat=lazy. deal with it.

"they eat more than their fair share, they waste medical services.....they take up two seats on the bus...."

applauds

if only more people would just cut them off...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v97JhEz4ZPQ

it actually sounds very similar to the ideas put forward by the stephen harper government.

deathtokoalas
public castration is a good idea, sometimes.

Kriegsmarschall Grim

Who are you suggesting be castrated?

deathtokoalas

that racist, murdering, scumbag piece of shit, obviously

there's lots of fun things you can do with a waste of oxygen like that, but it should be public and horrific to act as a disincentive for other dipshits that think he has good ideas.

you could disembowel him in public, or feed his carcass to vultures in the town center, or feed him, live, to hungry pigs.

whatever it is, the key needs to be to demonstrate that he doesn't have good ideas and there are consequences for adopting his mentality.

we need to get tougher on nazis, not continue spewing a bunch of liberal nonsense about freedom of expression.

Vinum Sabbathi

that doesn't make you very much different from the actual "nazis". Also how is Varg a "nazi"? Because you disagree with him? You must be "open-minded liberal" or something. 

deathtokoalas

naw, i'm a communist-anarchist that isn't delusional enough to equate hate speech with free speech. these barbaric lunatics will kill if they're not killed, and the general society needs to stop being naive about it. what i'm proposing is the only kind of message that they're ever going to understand. he needs to be made an example of.

this guy's politics are well known. he's killed people for not being satanist enough, and justified it by citing his barbaric value system. his musical movement is openly anti-semitic and openly white supremacist. he's been involved in violent acts of terrorism that have specifically targeted religious groups. the russian government would not be lenient on this guy, and the french government should not be lenient on him, either.

i don't expect that they will give him what he deserves, but they really should.

this isn't about economics or social policy or anything that can be fixed with different approaches. its just violent hate, drawn out of an ideology of immorality, and it needs to be stopped by any means necessary.

i see the sentence has come down and it's a fine. that's bullshit.

i spend far more time criticizing liberalism than identifying as a liberal, but as an anarchist i do have some overlap. while i do support individual rights up to a point, i believe society has the right to protect itself from these kinds of people and that takes precedent over individual rights. as this is purely a speech issue, i believe he should have been removed from society. the anarchist literature would refer to this as ostracizing him, and could mean anything from denying him the right to work to physically expelling him.

ideally, they should have sent him to siberia.

(several deleted posts)

deathtokoalas

i love how the responses i've deleted indicate that it was alright to kill the guy because he wasn't masculine enough, thereby demonstrating my point that this movement is driven by an ideology of immorality. you can't reason with these kinds of extremists, you just have to eliminate them.

"you killed him?"

"well, yeah. he was a fag."

"well, ok then."

fucking idiots...