Wild Bill

No doubt you already knew Pliny that just ONE volcano puts more CFC's and related stuff into the air than a "bazillion bazillion" cans of aerosol paint or deodorant? I don't remember the exact figure but I do recall that the difference was once again "mice nuts", as I love to say! I don't believe that man-made aerosols amounted to even 1% of a volcano's figure. This fact was well known at the time of the scare but of course, no one cared! These things take on a life of their own. As Carl Sagan used to say "Tell people that there are a billion billion billion stars in the sky and they will believe you without question. Yet hang a "Wet Paint" sign on a park bench and people just HAVE to touch it!"

I've read that the actual electricity from charging a Leaf at night, when McGuinty's rates are cheapest, is about 1/6th the cost of an equivalent amount of gasoline. Of course, there was no mention of all the related costs people in this thread have already mentioned. Also, if enough people switched to all-electric cars how long would it be before the government jacked up the price of electricity? Those of us old enough to have been driving in the early 80's can remember how diesel fuel was MUCH cheaper than regular gas! Then there was a bit of a move towards more diesel cars and suddenly the cost of diesel rose to be the same or even a bit more than regular, seriously hurting the truckers! This was even more suspicious when you consider that diesel grade is refined first, and THEN refined some more to make regular gasoline! It should ALWAYS be cheaper! Both the oil companies and the government are in cahoots to ensure that Joe Citizen is always being bled just to the point of dying, without actually killing him!

Yeah, nice try! This just looks like yet another case of politicians meddling in the marketplace, thinking they understand it enough to pick winners. They almost always fail, to the point where any success stories would have to be just from sheer chance! Business and technology are totally different skill sets than politics and political science. The problem with most politicians is that first of all, they tend to be academics, with that academic arrogance that because they can read a book and then talk articulately about a subject that means they fully grasp it. Second, the more political power you accumulate the more you can start to think that your power will always mean that you will get your own way. This may be true with getting people to follow your ideas but it means diddleysquat with how well your ideas will WORK! Especially with real world things like business and technology. Money can only buy so much BS. Look at Bre-X! Add to this that I think, at least at the level of national leaders like presidents and prime ministers, it is becoming well known that western countries like America, Canada and Europe/UK will never again have a strong manufacturing base of employment. That's gone forever! Warehouse and service jobs don't pay as much and we can't all be lawyers or corporate accounting controllers. A large segment of the population no longer has reasonably well-paying work available. What are they going to do? The numbers of these "lost" workers is large enough to be a formidable political bloc. Politicians are going to have to respond to them if they hope to keep their jobs. In fact, politicians had better have some real success improving the lot of these "lost" workers or they may have a civil unrest problem on their hands! To someone at Obama's level, the situation may look so bleak that a president may jump at the chance for some 'green' jobs in desperation, without bothering or caring to examine things in depth! It's too bad that for Obama as well that Solyndra has proven to be a disappointment. Wonder how Samsung is going to work out for McGuinty? Or his MicroFit program? It's ben a while now and there's no sign of another Inglis or Camco coming back to Hamilton...

Well, it helps to prove what should be obvious to all. Muslims are NOT all of one stripe, the same as any other folks. Most are civilized, educated, examples of decent human beings. The rest are just primitive and ignorant bullies and louts.

They are good sources for modern hobby style tinkering. I was the one who opened Paul Sayal's Burlington store, before it moved to down near Appleby. Thank heavens for those places! They are the only chance for someone making a onesy-twosy, private sale. All the other distributors closed their counters back in the 80's, except of course for Electrosonic. At an industrial distributor order desk, not only did we have minimum dollar figures for orders but parts were sold in standard package quantities. If you wanted one IC and it came packaged 16 pcs to a plastic "rail" carrier, you had to buy 18 pcs. We also couldn't take cash or credit card! Account orders only, thank you! Often, if we had what we called a "diddler" on the phone, tying up our time from where we made our commissions, we would give him a part or two FREE, as samples, just to politely get rid of him! My brother worked for a large, US based disti that had bought out a Canadian one. By that means he had inherited Dofasco Steel as an account. Dofasco was used to buying their electronic parts for maintenance and overhauls onesy-twosy. They would issue an RFQ for 1 of a particular transformer, 5 of a transistor, 140' of a type of cable and so on. A month or so later if you had won the RFQ you got a purchase order in the mail. This of course was 'horse and buggy' to modern distis! My brother's company was losing money on every Dofasco order. Their system was set up to sell standard packages, much of which was picked by automation from the warehouse to fill an order. To have someone manually break packages open to pick out odd quantities just for Dofasco was putting more labour cost into the order than the profit! So my brother went in to try to persuade them to adapt a bit. Essentially, they were treating their electronic part needs like any other commodity. They used the same process to order a computer chip as a mop or a ladder for their janitors. Dofasco's attitude, as described to me by my brother, was to get on a high horse and announce "We do nearly a quarter of a million dollars with you every year. YOU adapt to US!" At that point my brother had no choice. He gently suggested that if that was the way things had to be then they should find themselves another supplier! The company was shocked! They couldn't believe that a supplier would close an account of that much money over such an issue. They just didn't understand that the world had changed and that they were expecting a supplier to lose money supplying them in a horse and buggy fashion. This left them in a situation where for their electronic needs the larger sources, which offered many parts they could get nowhere else, would not deal with them in their fashion. So they had to turn to smaller sources and brokers, who of course charged them MORE for their trouble! Their costs went up, a lot! Still, appearances were maintained as those smaller distis were willing to do things their way. My needs are even more specialized. Vacuum tube electronic parts are quite different from mainstream types, since vacuum tubes operate at hundreds of volts or more, rather than tens. Filter caps for power supplies are typically 500 volt rated, coupling caps in the same ball part. Even resistors are at least 1/2 watt. 1/4 watt or less are not suitable at all. Power transformers are high in voltage with perhaps only a few hundred ma. of current, not the other way around. So I use Hammond in Guelph for most transformers. There is a tube disti who markets internationally on the Net right here in my home town and they don't mind a cash sale at the back door. Other stuff I get from niche market distis in the States. My biggest worry is solder! The 'tree huggers" have forced a shift to lead free solder in electronics. I guess they feel that lead locked in a solid form on a circuit board can somehow jump off and get into a baby's bloodstream. I wonder when they are going to insist on masks for babies transported in cars, that have a lead-acid battery under the hood? Anyhow, this caused incredible problems in that industry because lead free solder has a much higher melting point, to the level where often parts would melt before the solder! At great cost, they eventually came up with solutions with automated soldering with machines but with hand soldering there really isn't any solution! So I've gone out and bought about 20 lbs of oldfashioned lead-tin solder for a lifetime supply. Meanwhile, not a month goes by without some customer bringing me an amp he tried to fix himself, where he had gone to Crappy Tire for solder and they had sold him the lead-free stuff, which is all they carry nowadays. Of course, this meant the poor guy fried more than the fixed! I should bring my local Crappy Tire store some doughnuts next Christmas. They're making me money!

"Right. How could anyone forget your eminent qualifications? Because everyone equates the expertise gained by noodling around with Radio Shack parts in your garage as being qualified to evaluate regional power systems. " Yeah right, Shwa! Tell us another one! Buh-bye!

Same old, same old. Ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem. Predictable as the dawn. Back to the 'ignore' list. Life is too short. If I wanted to catalog my own failings I would get married again! I was hoping to learn something besides personal insults and propaganda.

I think we need some common definitions, jbg! Any one can buy such a unit and be shown how to plug in the in/out cables. That does NOT make you a technician! A technician would BUILD the unit! Inside are resistors, capacitors, transistors and/or integrated circuits, maybe a power transformer and so on. Some of us can drive a car. Fewer can work on the engine. Fewer still can actually fabricate PARTS for an engine! There was a time when you could walk into a Radio Shack and buy all the itty bitty parts to construct an amplifier from scratch. Perhaps it's still true in the States but in Canada those days are long gone. Their idea of parts is some connectors to fix your patch cords, assuming you don't want to simply buy new ones in blister packs. It's an important difference. My premise is that McGuinty and his government appear to be like someone who because he has heard a bit about the parts inside his car engine thinks he's qualified to work on it.

So obviously you've never read any of his books, have you? We bow to your informed opinion!

Hey, just look at virtually every stand CR has taken on native issues and my point is proven! NOBODY is absolutely and totally in the right every single time on every single issue! Natives are human beings like the rest of us, not gods! And you know, you almost always come across more than a little pretentious yourself...

First off, Radio Shack hasn't been a good source for DIY parts for about 20 years now. They sell computers, phones and accessories for such to pay the rent on their stores. I you need a replacement resistor, perhaps the most basic electronic part, you're S.O.L. Second, I've helped engineers from Northern Telecom to Yorkville Sound/Traynor amplifiers choose suitable parts for their projects. I was there selling computer chips when they were first invented! So your opinion is frankly, worthless! You aren't qualified to judge me. I make my living not just servicing but also building guitar amplifiers. How much solder have YOU melted in your life? However, I feel no need to argue. It looks like Dalton may stay in power, albeit with a minority. All I have to do is wait to seen my points proven. His schemes CAN'T work! I have Mother Nature and her Laws of Physics on my side. His is just a large scale cockup of what we have seen at box stores like Canadian Tire over the past year or two. Have you strolled down the aisle where they have all the solar panels and the accessories that go with them? These stores invested heavily in inventory and most of it is still unsold! The public would love to use the products but once they get into it they find out the hard way that they need to buy a lot MORE panels than they thought! And those panels are a LOT more expensive than they thought they would be! Meanwhile, any techie who understands how to calculate amp/hrs from batteries and average power delivered from solar panels to charge them is standing back just watching and shaking his head. Solar power has a long way to go to be affordable for the average consumer. It also has a long way to go to make Dalton look like he knows what he's doing. It has nothing to do with politics. Physics just doesn't give a crap!

AW, I'm beginning to believe that some of these posters actually would! And would be utterly shocked to find themselves or one of their family shot! They remind me of the typical teacher, who when a victim comes to them for protection from a bully, tells the poor kid that they should try to be the bully's friend! Or worse, tells them that they are embarrassing the bully by being so smart in class and if they had more respect for the bully's feelings the bully wouldn't be so violent.

Sorry Rue but as a civilized people we cannot do that! It would be a war crime!

It doesn't seem quite clear if the Libyan people are truly looking for a fundamentalist, Shariah law government or some fanatic group is just trying to seize power during a time of upheaval. Perhaps the majority of the people in the Arab countries of that region would actually prefer blue jeans and rock and roll. The problem is, the fanatics tend to have the guns and they actually ENJOY using them!

I don't know about fear mongering but I can say as a techie who makes his living from volts, McGuinty is obviously "technically challenged" to the point where one could define him as a "special" kid... I think he got bamboozled by the Samsung salespeople. A potential customer who was both ignorant and gullible. They must have thought they'd died and gone to heaven!

Do you have any idea how much of an inconvenience it was to have the main highway into the town blocked? To have your electricity gone for days? Setting aside the presence of townspeople, why were TV cameramen beaten up and robbed of their equipment? You make everything sound like something out of a dry history textbook. These were real people! You should read Blatchford's book "Helpless". You are arguing without much information, or at least information only from one side.

Stealing water? I thought the bulk of Israel's water came from massive desalinization plants, which Israel invented, designed and built themselves! How on earth is this stealing from the Palestinians, who seem to just sit on their asses and sharpen their knives... BTW, Derek's idea of Israel recognizing a Palestinian state has merit! It's guaranteed that such a state would not be able to resist more terrorist attacks on Israel for long. It would indeed give Israel a clear and legitimate target!

I checked out your link. It seems at first glance to be a non-partisan organization that champions children on both sides of the conflict. Then I dug deeper: "We ask you to add your voice to the call for an end to the killing of children, for a just peace in the region, for a fair resolution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. You might wish to call for an end to Israel’s illegal occupation since 1967 of land acquired by force. Or you might invoke international law, U.N. ­resolutions or the Geneva Conventions. At the very least you might wish to support the deployment of international observers in the ­region. We are confident that, in your own way, you will want to help save these children whom the world appears to have forsaken." Now it seems VERY partisan to me! The problems are defined as all faults of Israel. These people have a clear bias, making their data suspect. At the very least, they could have mentioned that the territories were occupied for security reasons, after the Arab states used them as a staging ground to start a war intending to wipe Israel off the face of the map! Why does nobody on your side of the argument ever even MENTION this fact? It's hardly trivial, you know! Even if we accept them at their word, however, it only makes sense to factor in the use of civilians as human shields and other atrocities. Should Israel allow a rocket launcher site to operate with impunity, because Hamas has put it inside a school? To me, for Hamas to even do such a thing proves my point about rabid dogs. To use children in such a way is a sign of a total lack of humanity.

I shouldn't even talk to you but I'l give it one more try and hope you'll be civil. McHale didn't even set foot in Caledonia until long after the riots and violence started! What are you trying to do? Use him as a convenient straw man while you rewrite history? And even if those imaginary racists were real, how does that justify putting an old man into the hospital and leaving him with permanent brain injuries? You simply excuse anything the protesters did. You'd champion Charles Eng if he were a native.

Making the gag order part of a buyout deal is really over the top! If that doesn't indicate a cover up on the part of McGuinty's government I don't know what does! The fact that he could even THINK of doing such a thing makes me question if he has any values at all! Of course, after Caledonia I should already have known. The man seems utterly without any firm character of any kind.

Name calling? What on earth are you talking about? Have I said anything that isn't true? I have said that Hamas and fanatic Arab groups love to fire rockets into civilian areas of Israel. They have sent suicide bombers to blow up innocents. They TARGET innocents! Is this not true? Is targeting innocents NOT the act of a rabid animal? Perhaps I simply have a higher regard for the lives of innocents, Jewish AND Palestinian than YOU seem to express! You blithely blow the lives of women and children off in almost everything you post about Israel! This is why I tend to keep you on 'ignore'. I get so appalled at your seeming definition of morality that I really don't care to participate with you.

Are you referring to those who teach in their schools that children should grow up to kill all the Jews? That the very trees will cry out "There is a Jew behind me! Kill him!" If that's not a call for genocide then I'm Sweet Daddy Siki...

I've paid some attention, particularly to their 'talking heads' on the radio and tv. They sound much more practical than they used to on economic matters. My big difference is that they don't seem to always understand the technical details of their "green" solutions. They sound like mere academics with little or no hands-on background, maximizing the "dirtiness" of present energy generation methods and minimizing that of their "solutions". They also take a LOT for granted in how well their suggestions will work in the real world, or how cost-effective they will be. So I can live with their economics, for the most part. I think they need some time to attract more hands-on people into their platform development committees before this "Utilitarian" could vote for them. That day would come a lot sooner for me if they would drop the ridiculous scam idea of carbon trading! They are positing that governments are qualified to set pricing for an artificial market they themselves would create. Past history makes it overwhelmingly obvious that governments are neither qualified nor honest enough to do such a task.

I'm still waiting for Hamas and the other fanatic regimes to admit that Israel has a right to exist at all! Have they taken that bit out of their charter about driving Israel into the sea out yet? I hear they still teach their children in school that someday the trees and rocks will say "There's a Jew behind me! Come and kill him!" You can't negotiate with rabid animals. I say invade the area and round up the entire Hamas government. Use them for landfill and then allow the Palestinians to choose their government without anyone holding a gun to their heads. Still waiting for Kalid Meshall to hold those elections due a few years back. I'm not holding my breath.

Sure! Better to have perpetual violence from a people with a state! They need a permanent base for their rocket launchers.