any comparison to greece is ridiculous. greece is not a money issuer. canada is entirely *unable* to enter the situation that greece is in for the simple reason that it can deflate it's own currency. greece cannot deflate it's currency because it's run by the european central bank. and, in fact, the solution to the problem in greece is very canadian - they need to implement a transfer solution. much like the federal government transfers money from the haves to the have-nots.

harper understands this. he assumes you don't. he might be right. but, don't fall for it. the structural reality is that canada cannot end up like greece, unless it were to, say, adopt the american dollar as it's currency.

regarding the deficit, he slashed taxes too low and relied on record oil prices to make up for it. on the surface, it looks rather foolish.

if greece went back to using it's own currency, it would be worth something like a quarter of the euro. that's the core of the problem: the way the eurozone is set up is incoherent. it simply doesn't make sense for the greek economy to use the same currency as the german economy. if you're going to have a financial union like that, you need to have some kind of political union that balances these things out. this is a problem we've resolved in canada. it would be nice to see him show a little leadership and suggest the obvious solution, rather than scare monger with what he damned well knows are economic fallacies.

www.cbc.ca/news/business/don-pittis-canadian-economy-needs-to-get-out-of-election-mode-1.3166265

Humans Suck @Jessica Murray
Well, they went and loaned Greece more money that they know can't be repaid. I bet the only reason they did so was because the "migrants" that the EU government loves so much will want their welfare cheques.

So, yes, I can understand Greeks rioting and backlashing at these "migrants", Golden Dawn style. If my kid was going hungry, but some foreign jerk was getting free food, yep. I think Greeks are absolutely sick of this, and that's why they tried to vote themselves OUT of the EU, so that can kick these African and Middle Eastern MOOCHERS out of their country.

Jessica Murray@Humans Suck
see, this is also a preposterous perspective. the eu has four of the g8 countries, and a lot of peripheral countries which much smaller economies. it's very similar to canada, which has a few very wealthy provinces and a number of outlying provinces.

the purpose of equalization payments is to address the fact that a province like new brunswick is unable to generate the same tax revenue as a province like alberta. in order to maintain a comparable quality of life, new brunswick takes tax transfers from alberta and spends it on services.

europe either needs to move to a federal system that recognizes that unequal tax bases require systemic wealth redistribution [that is, make these permanent bailout structural and permanent] or it needs to move to a smaller eurozone composed of countries with similarly strengthed economies. it can't have it both ways.

that has nothing to do with canada, which is a money creator and sovereign debt holder, quite unlike greece.

caulking the window

jessica
hi

i don't mind doing it, if you get me the caulk and let me use your gun.

it's good news and bad news. good news is that the pesticide is working. bad news is that there's at least a hundred dead ants in there. i'm going to leave them there for now, but i think it needs to be caulked relatively soon.

the landlord
I do have the caulking in my car. Sorry I have been busy and have not had the chance to come by. Pleae be patient I will come soon.

the canadian prime minister is warning that the opposition is going to create situations as occur in greece, should they be elected. openly fallacious fear mongering. give this a watch before you fall for it.

you kind got off topic there...

isis are some pretty bad bad guys. about the worst bad kind of bad guy that you could get. a little of it might be propaganda, but the crux of it seems pretty bad, regardless. they seem to be a front for saudi interests, and that gets to the heart of some nasty problems with american foreign policy. my analysis of this is that they're trying to stop a proxy war between saudi arabia and turkey, out of a political vacuum that's arisen in the region. essentially, the saudis and turks are fighting over control of the area in what is being (perhaps falsely) assumed as a post-russian sphere. that converts it into some kind of war against the saudis, on behalf of the turks. the saudis are trying to maintain a plausible deniability level of distance, but the americans don't really believe it.

but, i'm stealing your video to make a different point.

whatever you think about this, it places the canadian left in an ideological and policy position that needs clarification and rethinking. and, i think this is something that should be a part of the upcoming election cycle.

the ndp have held to principled foreign policy issues out of their role as a perennial protest party. now that they're looking at power, you can expect them to sound a little more like liberals. not a total abandonment of principle (the liberals were always relatively principled on foreign policy to begin with), but maybe a bit of a shot of reality into the principled perspective. the problem with this is that the liberal position has become untenable in the period of time that's elapsed since they last formed  a government.

the liberal party position on intervention has been pretty consistent since the establishment of the united nations, and it's to uphold the security council, the various conventions (including the geneva convention) and the rule of international law. their decision to go into afghanistan and serbia and stay out of iraq wasn't intuitive kneejerking, or even based on domestic politics. it was out of a very long standing tradition of moving with the un, rather than with nato. harper has realigned this position to one where canada just sticks to whatever nato (or increasingly just america) does. one would expect that an incoming liberal (or ndp) government would be likely to retreat back to the internationalist, united nations position.

...except that the iraq war has rendered the united nations useless. the russians have pointed very heavily towards the resolution on libya as the point where the un became toothless. whatever you point to as the breaking point, there has been a breaking point. this idea of the united nations as an arbiter is really out the window.

today, the united states does whatever it wants. in fact, the united states executive branch does whatever it wants. it doesn't seek approval from the united nations, and it ignores it when it votes against it. it doesn't seek approval from congress. it doesn't seek approval from nato. it follows no concept of international law, and doesn't care if it breaks it. as this has been developing, canada has had a government that has embraced their contempt.

so, where does that leave the canadian left in reformulating it's policy on intervention?

i happen to think that isis deserved a good bombing. these are really, really bad guys and if you leave them in place they'll do really, really bad things.

but, i think that there needs to be a post-un legal framework in place that allows us to come to that conclusion via more than gut instinct.

"we think the russians have been waiting for the ukrainians to do something that would justify an intervention"

really. the indiscriminate shelling isn't enough? contrary to the statements from the podium, putin was under extreme internal pressure to intervene. what we've been seeing is a strong rise in russian nationalism, and this narrative that putin (and russia) is too weak to defend it's own brethren.

rather, it seems to me that the entire point of this is to try and draw the russians into a quagmire to see them drain their resources and get them distracted. a la afghanistan. well, it worked back then. and what the americans are ultimately drawing on is their own failure in vietnam. a russia that is pre-occupied with a conflict on it's borders is a russia that is less of an annoyance in syria and other places that the americans are trying to redraw the map around.

for a while, it looked like the russians had fallen for it, but they stepped back.

note to america: if you're going to write a foreign policy with bases in an unaligned foreign country as it's strategic basis, it's a good idea to consult them before you publish it.

the arrogance was jaw-dropping to experience. and it's of no surprise that it backfired.

what a disaster....

want to know the most warped part of it? the americans have been angling for this. they want to recreate europe as an american export market, and they seem to be dipshit enough to think they can force them into against their will, and they'll just smile and eat their shit sandwich.

turkey is kind of important, guys. but europe won't interact with them on anything less pathetic than white christian supremacist terms. so, this was a matter of time due to economic isolation.

absolute, total incompetence: thy name is free market capitalism.

direct access...!!1!!

fools....

the end is near.

it is their despicable cuteness that they use for their nefarious ends.

expect policies to be crafted for eucalyptus terraforming. this should act as confirmation of my prophecies.

we may still defeat the koalas, if we act together, but we cannot expect any help from elected state officials. we must declare our own war on koalas, and we must do so at once.

i'm sorry, but why exactly were they arrested?

i think it's counter-productive. but i don't disagree with them. and i don't see any reason to remove them.

we like to pretend this is shocking, but it's old news. der speigel was doing this in the immediate post-war period. and, the new york times and washington post are also known to post stories written by intelligence. i've caught myself more than once yelling at the screen "who wrote this the fucking ci...yeah....". the idea that we have this free, open press is largely an illusion; it's just that the state manages to run it's state propaganda by coercing and intimidating the private sector, rather than taking direct control of it. it's mafia fascism, rather than direct totalitarianism.

the french are claiming they want the uk kicked out of the eu.

well, they do smell of elderberries.

the international community should have absolutely no tolerance for japan breaking chinese air space.

further, given the historical realities, china is fully justified to a response that would - and should - be viewed as offensive in just about any other circumstance. i'd argue that they have a right to shoot upon near encroachment.

it's a unique circumstance. china has no obligation to be patient, and the international community should not expect patience.

whether america is cognizant of what it is doing or not, it is aligning itself on what is not just the wrong side of some future history but the wrong side of existing history. nobody will tolerate this.

nobody should.

that goofy poll is not so strange if you look at the undecideds. it may suggest that the liberal-ndp swing just imploded. that is frustrating, but not entirely surprising.

let's be clear: stephen harper is irrelevant in the election. stephen harper has been irrelevant in every election he's run in. he'll get around 30% - higher if turnout is low. he won't swing liberals. he won't swing dippers. his numbers are stagnant, have been stagnant since he started and will remain that way until he finally goes away. he is not a popular leader. his policies are not popular. when he wins elections, as he has, it has had very little to do with him. despite him winning several elections, canada has never voted explicitly for harper. canada is not going to vote explicitly for harper. this is for the simple reason that canada does not agree with much of what harper has done, has to say or promises to do.

rather, there's an epic struggle on the left that neither party seems able to win. once that resolves itself, harper will be instantly destroyed. nary a tear shall be shed.

something that's consistent is that harper has no potential amongst undecideds - if you're going to vote for him, you've decided to already. so, when you see a poll that has tories 30%, undecideds 20%, ndp 22%, liberals 20% (or whatever it was), you can instantly translate that to: ndp 34, tories 30, liberals 28%. and, then that's every other poll.

a little bit of sneaky bs from a conservative pr firm. it won't be the last time.

but, if there's something to this idea that the undecideds are really that large, then there's reason to worry on the left.

i've said from the start: there are two possible outcomes of this election. if the left splits (as such as an undecided vote might suggest), then harper wins a sweeping majority with 33% of the vote, or whatever it is. all he needs to be is the most popular in the riding. and if the ndp and liberals split their 60% majority 30-30 across the board, he needs to average 31% to win.

unfortunately, he can do that. because that 30% is the conservative floor - outside quebec.

if one of the parties on the left pulls ahead, they sweep. the liberals basically can't do this, they can only contribute to the splitting. but if the ndp get that boost to 35-36%, then they get over the floor enough to sweep.

there will not be a minority government, as some conservative-friendly models are predicting.

nor will the uccb swing the election.

===

the tories are going to reduce turnout as much as possible, and push their own base. they have no appeal outside their base. they have to try and stop their opponents from voting.

the ndp are going to want to swing a small - but uniform - percentage point or two from the liberals. if they can stabilize at 35, they have a good chance of winning a majority.

the liberals do not have a strategy, besides hoping that the conservative base suddenly dies of old age. they would need an unrealistically large uniform swing from the ndp - upwards of ten points to compensate for their inability to compete in quebec.

this is going to be what actually sets off reform: massive anonymous leaks leading to spontaneous systemic failure.

they've acted like children. they have nobody but themselves to blame.

as difficult as the conditions in these regions are, these immigrants are raised into environments where they expect state organized health care. they expect that, regardless of everything else, the state will step in to provide care - because that is how almost the entire world works. they are shocked when they find out that this is not true in america. they cannot fathom this.

that is the sad irony of this situation.

note that the conspiracy theorists hate trnn. that means they're doing this right.

all i can contribute are my thoughts. hopefully, they're worth a little more than two cents. or two cents adjusted to inflation...

actually, i think whether he gets in those debates is a good indication of how co-opted he is.

it might seem stupid to personalize the war on a domestic level, but i think this ties very heavily into his perception of canada's involvement in the last iraq conflict. remember when he claimed he was "embarrassed"? i don't doubt that that's a legitimate feeling. most canadians look back on this decision to not involve ourselves with pride, and obama himself has been clear that he feels it was an error. that disconnect is not likely to affect him. rather, i think what harper is doing is trying to make it seem like he's personally responsible for canada "delivering" - as though it's a business deal. he's ultimately more concerned about what american defense planners think of him than he is of what canadians think of him. and he takes the nato alliance far more seriously than any previous prime minister ever has.

that very, very serious attachment to the principles of nato is something that is common across his foreign policy - as is this desire to present canada as a special, reliable partner to american defense interests. it's not something canadians have ever leaned towards on any serious level. you'd have to go back to before the arrow to even have the discussion exist, and you'd have to go back that far to really understand how he's thinking.

these are accusations that are as old as harper's time in politics is. they kind of went away. but the panel is maybe expressing more surprise than it ought to be.

why is it that child star after child star feels that prostitution is the most profitable way to move their career forwards?

there's nothing less realistic than an overweight superhero. they get lots of exercise.

maybe, if you spent more time doing actual backflips and less time telling a computer to do backflips then that body type wouldn't seem so unrealistic to you; if you behaved like the character you're playing behaves, you would be as thin as her, too.

we don't need fat superheroes. we need to collectively take better care of ourselves.

see, here's the thing.

you have to have more matter than anti-matter for this to add up. but it shouldn't happen, by it's own admission. and so the truth is that it really doesn't add up. if the explosion was as explained, we should really have this universe of pure light. but, we don't. so, it can't be quite as explained.

this is a history of the universe, rather than of the cosmos. if we have many universes [not in the many-worlds sense, i mean many different universes], you open up the possibility that the universe is not closed - that there is a possible additional source of matter from outside the universe. i think that's the right answer. but don't expect me to explain it in too much detail.

discussions on the origins of the cosmos (or really on anything outside the universe we live in) are currently outside the realm of any sort of coherent thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KYTJ8tBoZ8

if you conceive of many universes [not parallel ones] expanding in some kind of a space, the idea that they may in some way interfere with each other becomes almost unavoidable. you could come up with scenarios where we gained matter from a different universe that consequently has a surplus of anti-matter.

i don't have a really good argument, or anything. i guess it's sort of similar to an aspect of m-theory. it's more just probabilistic. if there's one universe, there pretty much has to be many universes. i can't fathom that our big bang could be a singular, unique event - it would have to have a naturalistic explanation, and that would have to be something that occurs repeatedly and regularly. and, then, if you accept that, arguing for a closed universe strikes me as kind of ridiculous. it becomes a question of determining how universes interact.

but, looking for any evidence of this strikes me as rather hopeless - and even pointless.

maybe an easy way to think of it is like this...

in order for the universe to expand, there has to be something outside of it to expand into. if there is some kind of block of energy or something in the way, it would not be able to expand. if there was some kind of friction slowing it down, we'd likely be able to infer it from calculations.

but what is nothing? let's not get lost in the standard kantian discussion. even if it's a vacuum, the effects of that vacuum still need to be understood on the expansion.

but, what is the likelihood of expanding into an absolute vacuum with absolutely no possibility of it interacting with anything? it seems remotely slim. i mean, we can't understand this. can't. but, it really seems obvious that there's something in the space that the universe is expanding into. and, it's going to have some effect on the way the universe expands.

so, how can we claim to have this understanding of the history of the universe, when we have no understanding of any forces acting outside of it, and it's obvious that there are forces acting outside of it?

universes might crash into each other. they might repel each other. they might stick together. there might be exotic objects flying through the cosmos that slice through universes. there might be forces that act on it's expansion.

i'm not denying that a big bang happened - there's the cosmic radiation and the experiments and the whatnot. it seems like a good basic start to understanding this.

but, i don't think we can get to a full understanding of things until we acknowledge that the universe is likely not a closed system, and that these various mysteries that seem to have no local explanation are probably actually the result of the universe interacting with the environment outside of it.

hedges is asking some important questions, but they're not the kind of questions you ask octogenarians. chomsky is still pretty sharp, but you can't expect good responses out of him on this. you're better asking him about the past than the future.

the reason manufacturing is coming back to the united states is twofold. the first is that the prison-industrial complex is offering slave labour prices, allowing firms to cut out transportation costs. the second is mechanization. neither of these will create jobs. conditions in china are improving, but not for their large prison workforce, which american industry takes massive advantage of.

if the future is mechanization and automation then we need to nationalize them. that's stated simply, but it's not a worker struggle - there aren't workers involved. so, we really need to be looking towards an understanding of labour in a post-industrial economy. it's not even about retail workers. it's about an economy with structural levels of unemployment pushing 40% because anything a worker would otherwise do is done by a machine.

my experience is that the left has been highly resistant regarding this discussion, because it threatens their entire intellectual framework. but, it's a very important psychological shift and the longer we wait the worse the consequences will be.

tersely stated, it's a choice between genocide and utopia.

the disposal (or preferably recycling) of discarded electronics is actually a fairly serious environmental concern, and these are pretty bad options. especially the barbeque. he missed an opportunity to demonstrate some level of responsibility, here, that might make him more appealing to a broader section of the electorate. but, i guess that's why he's in last place. he's not going to get much jomentum from this.

religious freedom. that strange, orwellian contradiction in terms.

for, the colonizers once carried out the same pattern everywhere. they would arrive on the shores of a distant land - be it the fringes of scandinavia or the south of africa - and begin the process of enslavement through forced conversion. the forced conversion works at the level of cultural assimilation; to become a christian was to become a roman, regardless of what one was before. and, so the expanse of northern europe became roman, as the expanse of africa became arab.

there was struggle, but in the end it was futile. the futility of the struggle against religion was less a statement of defeat and more a level of resignation. if far enough away from the centres of power, one need not actively practice the religion of the colonizers - one need only not revert to the indigenous belief systems.

but, after many years this was forgotten. we had all became romans; we had all become arabs. we quarrelled amongst ourselves as they did, arguing over specific natures of our brainwashing.

"the lord has but one nature!", cried the first slave.

"nay! it has three!", cried the second as he lunged at the first with his sword.

and, so the romans experienced blowback as a consequence of their use of religion. what was meant to control had become a means of revolt. "we demand freedom to worship as we choose!".

a sad irony that continues.

but, sadder still is that we musn't push too hard to discard the shackles. this old debate. it's because it is at the very centre of capitalist oppression that this mirror is so difficult to raise up, and results in such dramatic backlashes.

we have learned that religious persecution merely strengthens it's resolve. it's difficult to accept that. i'll be happy when the day comes that a speech like this is wildly mocked.

canada being on the verge of electing a....well, they're not really a socialist party. but they're a third party. this is a pretty big deal. we're a left-leaning country. our liberal party has swung about as far left as you can without embracing socialism. for example, we nationalized the oil industry in the 70s - under a liberal government. and the party poised to win isn't likely to do anything like that. but, it's still a big deal in the landscape of the political system.

the liberal party of canada is often called the most successful political party of the 20th century. in terms of electoral victories, it is a true statement. they won long mandates and governed for long periods. they wrote the bulk of our existing constitution. in a three party system, no party is ever completely safe from losing party status. to see the party collapse would be to lose a little piece of the country's history and culture.

but, it's looking increasingly necessary.

it's not completely unprecedented. the liberals were in this position once before, in the mid-80s. canada was the last to embrace thatcherism and did so with the least amount of zeal. in the end, the banks forced a lot of the policies that we did half-adopt on to us. even our conservatives are really liberals, and they just didn't fall for any of that 80s economic mumbo jumbo. it's largely politics rather than economics, but we were flirting with a junk status credit rating for a while - because our conservative party wouldn't make the cuts being pushed, because they knew it didn't actually make sense to get to the the end demanded of them. this is a bit of a stand that canada took against the imf that i wish was more thoroughly covered. and, it was our conservative party that took it. they privatized a few things - like the oil industry: a disastrous decision that is now politically out of bounds to discuss. but, instead of rolling off health care and other services, they took the bold policy decision of raising taxes. it destroyed the party. but it may have saved the nature of the country.

when the conservatives won in 1984 under the tide of thatcherism, it was a convincing win. mulroney got over 50% of the vote. they won, fair and square. no excuses. the liberals and the then third place party (the quasi-socialist ndp) were really at a roughly equal footing for the next couple of years. there was a lot of talk of the ndp overtaking the liberals. but, that didn't happen. rather, the liberals won a very large majority in 1993 and held on to it until 2004.

why was it different then?

a lot of analysts have focused on the fact that the ndp had a female leader over much of this period. it's not something for anybody to be proud of, but it may have had a small effect. i don't think this is the dominant factor.

i think the dominant factor is the liberals' record in government in the preceding periods, combined with their following policy proposals.

standing in 1993, one would look back at the trudeau government as a pretty progressive one. it was a liberal capitalist government, so all that criticism applies. but, it moved about as far out of that rubric as it possibly could. it created universal healthcare. it nationalized oil. it wrote a very forward-thinking constitution. i could go on for a while, but it's pointless. so, when chretien showed up and said he was going to renegotiate nafta and reorganize the gst as a luxury tax, left-leaning voters had every reason to believe him - the party had a record of it. they campaigned on the left, with a history of left-leaning policies and won based on that strength.

but, the 90s were different. canada had the imf breathing over it's shoulder and had to make some deep cuts. there's two subtleties that the left misses in this debate. the first is that the cuts were meant to be temporary, until various structural adjustments asserted themselves; the harper government has all but demolished this plan, but it was very real and did result in large funding restorations in the early 00s. the second is that the imf was pushing hard for "market liberalization", and threatening consequences; temporary funding cuts hurt people, but they were better than full privatization, which was the only other option. canada could not have continued on the path it was on and accept junk credit rating status. a hefty level of criticism should be levelled at these international bodies for their interference, but the world is as it is.

that's not the easiest debate to articulate, let alone win. looking at the liberals' 90s record today does not have the same pull to left-leaning voters as it's 70s record did to left-leaning voters in the 90s. it's a combination of fiscal conservatism and mixed market economics, pastiched together under a desire to squirm out of heavy international pressure to conform to the washington consensus amidst heavy domestic opposition to it. as a collection of policies, it's not going to appeal to anybody at all. it's only in understanding the context that it appears to even make sense, and that's beyond the realm of the average voter. educated voters don't even tend to really realize exactly what was happening.

so, they can't campaign to the left on a record of leftist policies because they haven't had leftist policies in decades.

and, the electorate's shift is consequently entirely rational. this is different.

the establishment hates clinton. she can't win. that's why they bankrolled obama to victory in 2008. i'm entirely expecting the banks to step in and bankroll somebody.

the narrative, of course, was backwards. people saw obama as the underdog, taking out the establishment candidate. the opposite was true.

i'm getting deja vu.

you're talking about sanders' fundraising as a good thing. rather, it should be a red flag. had voters listened to the people that were pointing out that obama was working for goldman sachs, we might have avoided electing him.

i think it's very important that people know where he's getting that money from. as mentioned: i was expecting them to come in and fund somebody to knock hillary out. i'm a little shellshocked that this person appears to be bernie sanders. but, i guess we all have a price.

i don't want to go through this again. the liberal media has a responsibility to vet his funding sources, and get the information out there.

i'm not saying hillary is a great choice. i'm saying i don't want to go through another wall street commercial for hope and change and end up with the heritage foundation dictating policy again.

imagine forcing everybody to go to college, or pay a fine.

i'm going to take a middle position on this. i'll argue that raising the minimum wage doesn't have an effect on jobs, but it's to a point, of course. i think that more to the point is that, somewhere along the way, we have to agree that what we call the "living wage" should not be the minimum wage - but also that there should be more living wage jobs and less minimum wage jobs. i think that we need to apply a needs-based model to get to a fair answer here. market economics aren't capable of really addressing this, as they gloss over too many details and they're approaching the issue from the wrong perspective.

the idea behind calculating the living wage is sound. lots of people have families. they require a certain amount of income to exist. wages in some sense should reflect what they need. i don't argue with this, and i agree that these are calculations that need to be done to create policies that need to be implemented.

however, the truth is that the labour force is full of plenty of people that don't have families. young people. people that are single. i'm from ontario, and we're relatively progressive, but the minimum wage has still always been considerably less than the living wage, as it's calculated here - and that varies from city to city. even so, the truth is that i've never had a problem making ends meet on minimum wage. but, there's lots of factors with that. i don't pay for cable. i don't have kids. i walk, bike or take public transportation; i don't have a car. etc. nor do i want any of these things, nor would increasing my income incentivize me to want any of these things. what the living wage calculation is missing is that i represent a fairly large fraction of the workforce; the truth is that it really doesn't make a lot of sense to pay me a minimum wage that is calculated as the minimum required for a single mother to live in a city with a car, because i'm not a single mother with a car and never will be. that's almost twice what i really need. as a rational agent, i wouldn't turn down the money. but, the truth is that i'm going to spend it on concerts and guitar effects. which is good for the economy and everything. but the point is clear. what i require as a minimum wage is considerably less than what a single mother would require as a living wage.

if you take a look at the workforce, you realize that a large percentage of minimum wage workers are older people with families. this strikes me as more of a root of the problem. there has to be way to find better jobs for these people, that pay living wages - and allow me to continue flying solo rather comfortably on the minimum wage.

so, if this is an issue for federal politics, it reduces to the need for a better jobs strategy, rather than a mandated wage increase. and, if that is deemed impossible, i'm left with the conclusion that there ought to be a legislative framework that determines salaries based on needs - and restricts discrimination on the point with the highest penalties. it's very much in contradiction with liberal market values, but i'm sorry - if i'm working the same job as a mother with two kids, you really ought to be paying her twice as much as you're paying me.

even if that's not something anybody wants to jump at, it's still not really a federal issue, because the living wage is dramatically different across the country. the only way it becomes a federal issue is if the legislation mandates action at a state or even municipal level. and, while my understanding of the united states constitution is weaker than my understanding of the canadan constitution, i'm pretty sure it's unconstitutional for the president to pass a law telling the states to pass a law.

so, i think this needs to be decoupled and approached a lot more subtly. throwing a flat number out there is easy politics, in some sense. i don't think it's good policy.

the strangest thing about this is that tony banks manages to look like the archetype of the 80s pop geek - in 1972. at least you can't accuse him of following a bad fashion trend.

the return of the giant hogweed

news reports are indicating that the giant hogweed is currently invading canada, and is indeed immune to our herbicidal battering. warnings have been produced that children should be aware of their presence. can we charge the plants with nursery crimes?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f59EKHdeyKc

just another thought...and i think it requires it's own post.

you point out in the video that you have to give conservatives credits for sticking to their guns and pushing their points without compromise. but, you're glossing over a larger strategic realty, which is that we've seen a role reversal. this is summed up in the term "radical right".

the language here gets messy, because we think of conservatives as representing the status quo and liberals (or socialists) fighting against it. but, that hasn't been true in a long time - since roosevelt, really. socialism is still outside the status quo, but liberalism has been the norm for a long time. the conservative movement has made a lot of progress in undoing the liberal status quo since the 1980s, but the process continues. well, it's weird because they adopted some liberal ideas (like free trade) and warped them for their own purposes. but it's still an ongoing process of reforming conservatives in battle against status quo liberals. you can see that in this debate - you are on the defensive, and standing up for the existing system. that puts you at a strategic disadvantage that you're confusing for a lack of strength in resolve.

in the process, liberals have conceded any impetus for reform to the right. liberals today rarely fight for anything to change; they fight for things to stay the same. it's conservatives that are fighting for change.

it's suggested here that the strategic shift should be to put your heels in and stand up for the status quo. that's not going to work. it's never worked. it just exposes the flaws in the status quo. again: you're confusing a strategic disadvantage for a lack of resolve.

rather, the strategic shift that liberals need to embrace is to get back to fighting for their own initiatives. human organ trafficking is a serious issue that liberalism has a lot to say about. but, instead of pushing reforms on our own terms, we're sucked into this position of standing up for the status quo. on issue after issue, there is always a strategy that can convert the debate out of defending an attack and into an attack of our own, but we tend not to take that option. we should.

yeah, but how many people pick him as second choice? calm down. a quarter of a half is an eighth, and that's roughly what you'd expect his rhetoric - which is populist, he doesn't really mean it - to actually appeal to.

if a study were published tomorrow that said that a little more than 10% of americans are xenophobic, white supremacist, racist doofuses, you'd argue the numbers are too low.

supporters of the religious right won't vote for him. he's bad enough that moderates and independents might actually vote democrat. that's likely a plateau...

however, it says a lot about the economic situation in the united states, which needs to be seriously addressed. trump is profiting from it in the short term. it's what he does. a wake up call, but we're not there, yet.

yeah. you addressed that second point. good analysis.

well, what does that say about the process of granting tax-exemption status?

the videos are incriminating. denying it is the wrong approach. but, the issue is not the legality or morality of abortion or the legality or morality of tissue donation - these ought to be beyond question, and you shouldn't be buying into that narrative. rather, the issue is that a big, corrupt corporation is acting like a big, corrupt corporation. this is an argument to get profit-generating market mechanisms out of health care; the left should actually be taking advantage of it to push for serious health care reform.

if the right gets their way on this, it's going to amount to a privatization, and that's going to open up a market for body parts. their proposed solution is going to create what they claim they're arguing against. now, history suggests there might be something to the idea that this is what they might actually be angling for, but it's a conspiracy theory, and it's sort of inconsequential whether it's actually true - no matter how strongly you support abortion rights or medical research, there are obviously extreme ethical problems attached to the creation of a market in human organs. and, that's the greater issue that needs to be grappled with: that defunding this group is going to exacerbate this problem. as mentioned, the only logical way to approach this is as a catalyst to set off serious health care reform.

i mean, i know you just went through that, but it wasn't serious health care reform, it was just a handout to the insurance companies.

again: when you have a health care system designed around the generation of profit, you have to expect this kind of behaviour. you can make all the laws in the world, and enforce them as bluntly as you'd like - it's not effective. so long as the practice is a business, the market will drive corrupt behaviour. the root cause here is the nature of  the american health care system.

it's clear that there's a problem here, but defunding the group is not an answer. that functionally amounts to fully privatizing the business, which is likely to lead to worse abuses. this is deeper, systemic and requires a different approach.

i am a strong proponent of abortion rights and medical research. however, i do believe that the potential sale of human body parts is an issue that is serious enough for congressional investigation. some proposed solutions that are better than defunding:

1) pass legislation that forces a public auditing of tissue donation costs. in fact, make it a regular thing. make the figures accountable. ensure that exact costs are precisely delineated. this is broader than planned parenthood - it should be applied to any situation where the possible profiting of selling human tissue is an issue. this is reasonable accountability, and should really exist anyways.

2) you could install the state as an intermediate in tissue donation, and have the recipients refund the state rather than the private party.

it's not wise to underestimate the intelligence of your opponents. analysts have been predicting a rise in white supremacism as a consequence of the failure of neo-liberal economic policies for many years. mobs of angry, desperate people attract demagogues. you're better off working to reverse the root causes than smugly insulting them from a distance.

it's very delicate. quebec has already made the choice for the rest of canada: the serious option is the ndp, by lieu of their dominance there. if the country goes along with this, the ndp will likely sweep. but, if it doesn't go along with this then the vote splits and harper sweeps. for all the talk of a close election, the three-way dynamic is actually putting down two dramatic majorities as the only really likely outcomes. the way these models are distributing votes is really not likely to translate into reality; you're really not likely to see any sort of minority government come out of this election.

www.cbc.ca/news/politics/mulcair-trudeau-approval-ratings-point-to-potential-for-growth-1.3161855

Tired taxpayer
@Jessica Murray .........................Sorry dear but quebec does not make the choice for Canada, that was proven last election. Not trying to be nasty but id rather have putin run Canada than a PM from quebec, especially those two clowns.

Jessica Murray
@Tired taxpayer well, putin and harper are ideologically very similar, so you might get your wish.

it’s always been an inapplicable model to apply to any kind of retail or service sector. the reason is that labour demand is relatively inelastic, because commodity demand is relatively inelastic. at the end of the day, employers make decisions based on what they need to run their business, not what they can pay out.

suppose a big company like a walmart has x workers. if it could survive with x – y workers, it would. it wouldn’t keep those extra y workers just because it can afford it – it would lay them off to maximize revenue. so, you have to assume that the business is already hiring the bare minimum number of people that it can to carry out it’s operations. increasing the salary of those x workers doesn’t all of a sudden mean that the business requires less workers. it actually follows that laying off workers is consequently an impossibility, unless they want to downscale operations altogether – for example closing departments. but, they would only do that if those departments were not profitable, anyways.

rather, the realistic choice that a big company like a walmart needs to make in the face of a minimum wage hike is whether it wants to eat the loss or raise prices. the logic that follows is that minimum wage increases do not create unemployment so much as they fuel inflation.

in some cases, that inflation may then lead to job losses as small companies become uncompetitive. but, this is a consequence of the efficiency of the economies of scale and something that should not be fought against. the demand will then move to larger companies, who will need to hire workers to compensate for the increase in demand. arguing that workers should eat low wages so their bosses can remain in the bourgeois class isn't an argument that anybody should sympathize with.

so, the real issue is inflation, the real concern regarding inflation leading to job losses is for small businesses and it's something that will balance itself out in the long run.

a better argument against wage increases is consequently that it's a waste of time because inflation just eats into it. but, as pollin notes, this is acknowledging a problem without taking steps to address it.

the proper solution is to index the minimum wage to inflation. this may seem politically unpalatable, but the government of ontario has recently done this - and at inflation-adjusted levels that are actually historically high. there wasn't even any really serious pressure. it was an economic decision, to spur demand. see, that's how you actually create jobs - you give people more money to spend. canadian liberals are a different breed than american democrats. they actually take liberal economics seriously, rather than merely provide lip service to it. but, it demonstrates it's not an impossible policy.

tying inflation to the cpi [the bread basket of necessary goods] should act as a disincentive for companies that make items in the cpi to reflexively boost prices as a reaction to the mandated wage increases, as it's just an unending cycle. but, it may have the effect of increasing the prices of luxury goods. that's a shift in prices. but it has another positive impact - it's a carbon tax, by stealth. regardless, what we want is the price of necessities to not run away and if that means the price of luxuries needs to go up a bit then it's a reasonable offset.

valid point and whatnot - no argument. but, there's a part of this discussion that i'm never able to really understand. i spent hours in the car when i was kid, while i waited for parents to run errands on the way back from various things. there's a certain age where you don't really want to be seen walking through the mall with your parents, so i always asked to stay in the car - on the condition that they left the battery on, so i could listen to the radio or put in a tape. this allowed for the air conditioning to run. he'd take the keys with him. my memories spent in the car alone are consequently relatively positive.

i think that there's a larger problem with leaving a very young child or a pet in the car for a long period than the temperature. but, i'd argue that there's a relatively young age where it's not much of a concern for a short period, and that sometimes it's tactically the only real option. in those cases, it's not a very difficult task to leave the battery on to provide for air conditioning.

why that is never mentioned, i don't really understand.

deathtokoalas 
+tupen see, that's very true and everything. but, i think the likelihood of the fan failing is relatively remote. on top of that, chances are the air was on on the ride there. i'm not arguing with the premise: you don't want to leave your dog alone in a hot car for any extended period of time. but, you can't take your dog into a grocery store, for example, either. you could take them home first, sure, but that's not always reasonable. you could also just turn the fan on. it's probably better than leaving them outside tied to a pole or something in the searing heat.

as i mentioned, there's bigger problems with leaving very young kids in a car by themselves. i'd say that's up to around three, you've got abduction issues. they might randomly start choking, or...it's just irresponsible. but, once they can walk and talk, and be told to sit in the car and not open the door for strangers, and you're pretty sure they're going to listen to that request, leaving them in an air conditioned car for ten minutes doesn't strike me as much of a crime.

deathtokoalas
+tupen well, i think that physics kind of disagrees with you. but that's ok. there's only one way to find out: find a car in arizona and try it and get back to me on your results.

but, when you do the experiment, don't get into a car that's been sitting in the sun all day. leave the air on for a half hour first.

i suppose you can cook up jingoism with this kind of nonsense, but it has no rational moral footing. we routinely give awards to war criminals.

i have no tears to shed for dead soldiers; i see it as gang violence. the more they kill each other off, the better it is for everybody else.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8Q0MMHwx4k

canada's muslim and arab population dwarfs it's jewish population by several orders of magnitude, is more inclined towards conservative value systems than north american jews (who tend to lean left...) are and is likely not statistically less wealthy (although it may have less ultra-wealthy people). canada is better than the united states in limiting campaign donations. from a domestic political perspective, it is entirely irrational for the conservatives to blindly support israel at the expense of alienating a larger arab vote that's more inclined towards it's policies.

i think the truth is that harper is an evangelical christian of a particularly fundamentalist type. i think it's a personal conviction, brought out by a complex interaction between his religious beliefs and being raised in an environment where the second world war never really ended. i think, in his mind, nato is still fighting to save the world from evil, and supporting israel falls into that narrative for whatever reason.

you have to understand that it's widely recognized in canada that stephen harper is not mentally well - he is at the least a clinical psychopath, and has shown multiple symptoms of various personality disorders. it's not always wise to try and understand him using the "rational thought" model. he is constantly behaving erratically.

that was a long time ago, now.

it's interesting to wonder how much of an effect that this fiasco had on the collapse of the bloc. the bloc was created to represent quebec's interests; at the time of this mess, they hadn't been actively campaigning for sovereignty in quite some time, and had instead coalesced into a regional block. harper has never been anything but reviled in quebec - and this is a political fact, not a cultural one. had all those seats been liberal or ndp, there's a chance that dion & layton may have formed a government in the first place. the clearest consequence of this mess was consequently that the existence of the bloc was acting against the interests of quebec.

harper's point seems valid if you're flying on the seat of your pants through this, but anybody with an understanding of electoral politics realizes he's not making any sense. we don't vote for a prime minister. we vote for members of parliament. the members of parliament then choose the prime minister. that's not an opinion, it's the way our government works. if mr. harper wants to take the unprecedented step of declaring himself president...

the fallout of this was very negative for the liberals. i've long believed that dion was sabotaged on the inside by ignatieff, who strikes me as a kind of a machiavellian bastard. and, in the long run they might not recover.

but, i'm here today because i think the liberals are going to be devastated in the upcoming election, which is beginning to look more and more like an ndp sweep. it's delicate. due to vote splitting on the left, the difference between an ndp sweep and a conservative sweep is merely a few points. 200 seats are going to swing on 3-4%. it's dramatic, and not representative of the country's will in much of any outcome.

and, i think stephane dion is sitting in what is probably the only safe liberal riding in the country.

i believe they made a mistake in abandoning him too quickly in favour of what they saw as a coronation, against any kind of logic. dion is in the mould of the previous leaders of the past liberal dynasties: he has huge amounts of experience, and has written some substantial legislation. replacing him with a tv host from another country that pretty much everybody agrees is politically a democrat was cynical and foolish. he had a set of very good policies. he needed time, patience and support. in a past era, he would have gotten it.

the remaining opportunists will abandon the party in october, as it is now void of immediate opportunity. i expect that the task to rebuild this party is going to fall on him, once again. he'll have all the time in the world, this time.

pluto has a really weird orbit that brings it in between uranus and neptune, and actually takes it closer to uranus from time to time. there's a large, measurable effect of neptune on pluto's orbit that is well understood. accepting that the geological activity may be due to gravitational effects that planetary mechanics refers to as "oscillations" is still a little outside the realm of accepted science, but it's also a research question that is building greater support. it seems as though planets like jupiter and mars may have some effect on the geological activity that occurs on earth. likewise, the answer to this apparent mystery may very well lie in this developing understanding; it may be gravitational interaction with the other planets, primarily neptune.

i see they're ruling out tidal drag because of the perception that charon and pluto are in equilibrium, but this is a goofy assumption for three reasons:

1) those calculations are fairly crude. i wouldn't be going around using them to argue against anything.
2) "equilibrium", in context, is never going to be "perfect equilibrium". there's outside forces. it's not a closed system.
3) the larger pluto-neptune-uranus system orbits in cycles that are measured on the scale of centuries. we don't have the kind of data required to draw conclusions about the stability of the system, and won't until we can at least observe an entire cycle with what we today call modern equipment.

it's consequently more accurate to say something like "plato and charon seem to be in approximate equilibrium at this phase of the uranus-neptune-pluto system". and, that statement doesn't say anything about the possibility of tidal drag through other phases of it.

the way i'd imagine it is something along the lines of that pluto is moving through these gravitational fields in a relatively erratic fashion and that the modulations that occur as the result of that movement are exerting pressure in different directions. for a large part of the orbit, pluto would be held in place by a four-body system dominated by itself, the sun, neptune and uranus. it would often be pulled in opposite directions by uranus and neptune. oscillations in that system could produce the forces required to set off the plate mechanics.

but, i don't really have the interest to work this out in detail. at least not right now, anyways.

omm

initially written in 1994. first full recording in 1996. recreated in mar, 1998. reclaimed & remixed on july 18, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/omm

unfortunately, it's not just a dollars and cents issue. putting the decision of who gets care and who doesn't in the hands of a board of directors carries all kinds of baggage. this idea that it's an objective decision based on maximizing profit is far too kind to the system. rather, you also have to take account of things like racial biases, personal favours and every other kind of corruption you could possibly imagine.

and, that's the irony in the propaganda. the right talks about collectivist health care systems as these centralized bodies that have the power to make decisions that will affect your lives. in truth, that's the system that america already has. most other advanced countries (like canada) have the concept of universality and refusal of treatment worked into their legislation - and in some cases it's even in the constitution.

the eugenics death councils are the insurance companies. and, they exist essentially nowhere else in the world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXBy1UgZRLs

of all the things i don't understand about america and americans - and there are many - one of the most startling has always been exactly why it is that kansas city is not in the state of kansas. that seems like a no brainer; real obvious. only in america, right? but, in fact, i don't even need to look it up - it's to avoid taxes, right?

i'm sure your mom is probably a very nice person

initially written in 1994. first full recording in 1996. recreated in mar, 1998. reclaimed on july 18, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/im-sure-your-mom-is-probably-a-very-nice-person

the original series was a horribly boring, unfunny show without any hint of meaningful commentary. i give it six months. there won't be a second season.

rather, people will realize that their memories are warped by other factors, like enjoying time with their dog.

the hanging part of this is especially troubling, as it has historical ties to lynching. i can't prove anything, but i suspect there's a much deeper story underlying this. who didn't get the job?

Cotton Candie
+deathtokoalas you know that feeling is unreal! I've met too many harassed stalked women who've been wrongfully hauled in with no legally binding excuse & released arbitrarily at 3 am in the worst parts of town with none of their own things... i can believe more is at work here for Sandy to have worked this hard and gotten this far then just give up? no. that's what the folks who say that ish would do.

martin michel
+deathtokoalas Lynching? lmao you fucking crackhead.

deathtokoalas
+martin michel well, it seems to me like a woman was killed via hanging by the corrupt kkk-linked police because she accepted a job that somebody else (likely also kkk-linked) wanted. that's a lynching.

unfortunately, the investigation will also likely be kkk-linked.

"it's blatantly obvious" is not a legal argument. so, there's going to need to be an independent investigation to figure out what actually happened - despite it being blatantly obvious. i'd advise beginning with the other job applicants.

you have to add up the reform & progressive conservative totals in the 90s, but the last time the conservative party of canada polled under 29% in an election was in 1945, when the opponent was william lyon mackenzie. popularity swings widely and whatnot, sure, but there's a certain level of ideological support for the right in canada, and it stands somewhere around 30%. since 1945 (that is, the post-war era), the conservatives have only polled under 30% once - the year that their former leader endorsed the liberal party, under concerns that the new conservative party was lurching to the extreme right. that's the absolute, rock bottom minimum. 29%.

so, you don't need to ask a dead dog for advice to conclude that the polling putting the conservatives around 27% is a little eager. that would be historic. harper is bad, but he's not that bad. he will hold his base.

so, you need to pencil that bottom in at 30%. that's as low as you can realistically expect those numbers are going to go. and they have - in fact - been this low on numerous occasions since 2006. harper has consistently been far less popular than his predecessors, often hovering around the party's rock bottom level of potential support. the truth is that, as a leader and a strategist, he's been an unpopular failure since the start. he's just been lucky to have an incompetent opposition.

this is why i've been arguing against the liberal strategy. they can't eat into that. they could elect joe clark. they could change their name back to the liberal-conservatives. it doesn't matter. a hair under of a third of canadians are going to kneejerk to the right-most mainstream option. not out of any reasoned argument. not out of any identification with branding or leadership. but just out of base ideological conviction. it's been trying to bleed a rock a death.

and, as was predictable, the ndp are sneaking up from the other side - because the liberals have spent the last ten years trying to get conservatives to vote for them.

mulcair may not have time to build the momentum to sweep. but he might. it depends on how fast this happens. but, the support is going to come from the liberals. at the end of the day, the conservatives will not fall through their 30% bottom. but, depending on how much momentum the ndp can generate, the liberals could conceivably lose party status.

my understanding is that the architect of this policy of appealing to conservatives was michael ignatieff, and you can put his name on the obituary of the most successful political party of the twentieth century.

==

a lot of the media is focusing on the question of how low the conservatives can go, and that has been a part of the narrative for many years. but, the truth is that we know the answer to this question, and they're already hovering around the mark - as they have several times over the last decade.

the really interesting question is how high the ndp can climb. and, given that the liberals do not have an ideological base of voters, the maximum level is probably reaching levels of support that are unheard of in canadian politics. i'm not predicting 60%. but, this is probably close to a realistic maximum threshold.

if they gain enough momentum - to the point that it is clear as day that they are the winning ticket to change governments - i do not think that a majority in the popular vote is out of the question.

the development question is sadly rare in this medium, and the response was underwhelming. the key thing to understand is that the best way for america to help development is not to do more but to do less. a much better president once developed something called the good neighbour policy, which was a non-intervention strategy. it was an excellent, progressive, forward-thinking idea. it didn't take long for the blasted monroe doctrine to reassert itself, with continued disastrous consequences. before we knew it, we were secretly funding contras to suppress the population by carrying out weapon sales to iran.

three major ideas will help reverse the violence:

1) end the drug war. legalize it.
2) stop overthrowing elected governments that are trying to end the violence.
3) put the free trade agreements that they signed at the tip of a gun through a paper shredder.

none of these are in the realm of discourse. and, a neighbour who "resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others" is not looking to be a likely development in the near future.

when you see people talking in a situation like this, it often seems like they don't really grasp the situation, and it leads to this perception that they're not reacting like they ought to. that's because they don't really understand the situation. it's not going to actually click until they get the call. they will convince themselves things are going to work out until the last moment that they no longer can.

given the scenario, the most likely explanation is probably predation. bear. cougar, maybe.

confused (instrumental)

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015. electronics added on july 16, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/confused-instrumental

confused (vocal mix)

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015. vocals and electronics added on july 16, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/confused-3

cnusodef

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015. deconstructed on on july 16, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/cnusodef

open

originally created in april, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 4, 2015. remixed july 15, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/open

why (vocal mix)

initially written in 1996. recreated in april, 1998. a failed rescue was attempted in 2013. reclaimed july 12, 2015. vocals added july 15, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/why-4

ogyanemob

initially written in 1993. first full recording in 1996. recreated in dec, 1997 and again in jan, 1999. reclaimed on july 2, 2015. remixed on july 15, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/ogyanemob

dohgye

initially programmed in 1997. digitally modified in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 29, 2015. remixed july 15, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/dohgye

werso smidits

originally written in 1996. recorded in feb, 1998. reclaimed june 28, 2015. remixed july 15, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/werso-smidits

ants followup

hi.

i haven't really looked into it much, but i don't think i can prove that it's the plants - just because ants and plants are both everywhere. even if the plants did attract them, i have little faith that removing them will take them away. and, honestly, that wasn't really what i was thinking. if it was roaches, i'd be a bit more concerned about the plants, but not ants...

my hypothesis is that it's related to the weather. it's been an unusually cold and wet summer. ants like it warm and dry. so, the cold and wet soil has led them to migrate, and they ended up in the house. it's less a pull hypothesis and more a push hypothesis - it's less that something is attracting them to the house and more that the weather is forcing them to explore, and they happened to stumble upon the house.

that said, something else that's recently changed is the barbeque in the front. and, i don't think i need an article to prove that ants are going to want to be around where there's a barbeque, as anything that gets dropped will become food. further, you can clean a barbeque, but you can't *really* clean a barbeque. maybe you could ask if they've seen ants around it and keep an eye on it.

but, again, i don't think that's the reason. i think it's the weather.

there's a study here, but there's lots of more info on the topic out there:
http://news.stanford.edu/pr/01/ants45.html

i think the only option is barricading them out. and hoping it warms up soon...

j

i don't have an issue with donating tissue for medical research, regardless of the cause of death. but, a profit motive worked into the process is absolutely a problem, regardless of the age of the person donating. a firm making a profit from people donating body parts from car crashes is not less of a problem. nor (i would argue) is a profit motive in health care, in general. now, this video is in the process of being publicly vetted, so we'll have to see what the outcome of that process is, but, if it turns out that the sale of body parts is an ongoing issue, i would argue that the solution is not to modify abortion laws, but to modify regulatory practices so that nobody is making money from the donation process. this may suggest a larger role for government and institutions like universities in stem cell research - which should not be allowed in the private sector for other reasons, as well. as a canadian, this strikes me as a problem that is unique to the american for-profit health system.

stated tersely, i wouldn't designate abortion as the problem, here (if there is a problem, here). i'd designate capitalism as the problem, here.

fwanksajerk7
+deathtokoalas Oh spare me. Without being able to make money somehow, planned parenthood would become a net drain and eventually shut down, dragging the tax paying supporters along with it. In america the 99% are already overburdened, you want them to pay even more? Just regulate it so that certain parts can only cost $X amount and nothing over.

deathtokoalas
+fwanksajerk in canada, abortion is viewed largely as a medical procedure. the vast majority are carried out in hospitals and funded by the public health care system. this is in fact the most efficient way to approach abortion. further, public polling in the united states has long upheld single payer as the preferred option.

if you're going to tax somebody, i'd rather tax the bank. but, it's not really the point. the point is more that market economies are inseparable from corruption. if you want an open health care economy, and most americans don't, but, in the abstract, if you do, then you need to make a choice:

1) you can regulate it to death, and then regulate the regulators. this is expensive, inefficient and often ineffective due to regulatory capture. further, it defeats the point. it's a no-win scenario. if you're going to regulate it to this extreme, you'd might as well nationalize it - it's far more efficient.

2) you have to accept that there is corruption in markets.

in the end, this doesn't really have a lot to do with planned parenthood. i'm staunchly pro-choice. but, i realize that for-profit institutions are inherently evil because they're driven by the motive to profit at the expense of everything else. i don't find the idea of a corrupt abortion corporation particularly surprising; it's just the corporation part that needs a reaction, not the abortion part.

you know, this is an area that the americans have wanted to place ballistic missiles in for many years - ground sites in poland, aegis systems in the black sea and the baltic, space based weapons....

to protect the area from iran. supposedly.

as i said before: i didn't initially give this a second thought. i assumed it was an accident. but, what was that (alleged) american satellite doing flying over there?

eminem has always been near the top of the list of rappers with the potential to take it to the next level and break through that ceiling that rap and hip-hop have always had, separating it into an inherent folk form. every other 20th century form has broken through that barrier, and it's kind of puzzling why rap can't/won't. this is some kind of industrial music, but it's slow and repetitive. if he could get the music running at the same kind of syncopation as the vocals this would be very compelling; i'm talking 240 bpm bass beats intersecting with busy basslines and off the wall synths. a collaboration with flying lotus. he can keep his blunt aesthetic, it may even be an asset in driving the aggression.

my hypothesis has been that rap tends to reject this because it wants to make space for the vocals. but, it's long past time for somebody to move into this space. eminem, specifically, has matured enough that i think he can find a way to get his vocals to not just co-exist with a more developed musical approach, but help it transcend.

as it is, i'm walking away from this with the same feeling that i've been walking away from every hip-hop record that i've heard since 1991 - it's just not reaching it's potential.

this is the correct analysis, and you don't hear it often - which is why i'm always posting it. the crux of israeli policy is the separation of gaza from the west bank. and, this kind of solidarity is exactly what israel was trying to prevent, in breaking up the unity government. at the end of the day, israel simply does not care about gaza. but, it has every intent of controlling and annexing the west bank.

see, i agree that it's clearly in rather poor taste for the guy to walk around with that flag, if he does. i dunno what he's doing. appealing to a southern, rural fan base or something. but, that's marketing. i mean, c'mon al. the only hierarchy that kid rock is at the top of is the "talentless morons from detroit" hierarchy. no, really. he's at the top of the pyramid. icp is the next ring down. and etc. obama's policies have done more harm to brown people than kid rock ever will.

you don't have to agree with him to realize this is a waste of energy, and he's just going to milk it for publicity.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NzfI7Ath7s

this is an important speech that should be thought about very carefully.

cognitively speaking, the eye covering is very interesting.

and, then, when you're done your lunch break, you can go back to your pointless bullshit life.

that is why this is garbage. not because it doesn't have some poetic value, if you drop the mesolithic basis of it; it does. no. it's because it's a coping mechanism, designed to clear you out and send you back into the fire.

if you actually live your life by these kinds of principles, you don't need to spend twenty minutes a day dreaming that you do.

no longer confused

initially written in 1997. recreated in feb, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/no-longer-confused

i still don't fully understand this.

initially written in 1996. recreated in april, 1998. reclaimed july 5, 2015. remixed july 12, 2015.

https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/i-still-dont-fully-understand-this

i think it's a very dangerous error to assume that israel doesn't have a long war. and, the logic of the circumstance actually comes out of understanding their long term strategy.

i've been through this a few times. israel is willing to allow for a palestnian state in gaza; in fact, it would like to rid itself of it. it would prefer for egypt to take the lead. but the idea of gaza as palestinian land is not contentious on the israeli right. this is the land of the philistines, and not a part of historical israel.  however, israel is not willing to allow for a palestinian state in the west bank - it intends to fully colonize and eventually annex the region.

it follows that having the governments split is in their interests. since the election of hamas, the west bank has functionally been an israeli province; fatah has no legitimacy, and very little control. hamas, of course, is not a serious threat. but, should a government develop then that will force the israelis to go back to talking about a "two-state solution" - which is a dead idea on the ground, but still talked about widely in ivory towers.

israeli plans for a future palestinian state are limited to gaza and do not include the west bank. that's the logic.

cockroach experiment proposal

To: rjfull@berkeley.edu

hi.

i have a proposal for a very cheap but very interesting experiment. i could probably do it myself, but i don't really have the knowledge to seriously control it. and i know that roaches are attracted to each other.

i've got a few roaches hanging around somewhere outside my apartment; they appear to be under the foundation. they don't seem to want to move in, they just scatter in from time to time; i kill a handful of seemingly lost ones every year. they're the oriental ones.

the thing is that there's no food source in here. now, i know they can eat just about anything with a carbon molecule in it - which is impressive. but, even so, about the only option they seem to have as a *plentiful* food source is each other. so, i'm curious.

i understand that it's known that they eat each other. what i'm curious about is just how long a roach colony could survive in controlled conditions with absolutely no source of food but themselves. they'd need water. and the right temperature to breed. but, besides that, nothing.

i suspect that they could survive long enough to breed, but, then, who eats what? do the nymphs eat the old adults and carry on to the next generation, or do the adults eat the nymphs and kill the colony? if the nymphs eat the adults, it may be proposed that a cockroach colony is a fully self-sustaining entity. i can't articulate a way that this breaks any kind of energy conservation laws, as it's also known that they eat their own excretions.

this is cheap. you just need an aquarium, some roaches and some time. a good project for a grad student; or even a high school project, really. but, the results could be very important in understanding how to control them.

j