WIP

You'll probably like this then: their half hr. set at the Glastonbury Festival http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=mf6A8KxVQkE FULL CONCERT (click on a time mark to go directly to a song): 01. Intro - 0:00 02. A Heavy Abacus - 0:21 03. Austere - 4:45 04. The Greatest Light Is the Greatest Shade - 10:50 05. Cradle - 16:43 06. Whirring - 21:04 The Joy Formidable are an alternative rock band formed in 2007 in North Wales and currently located in London, England. The band consists of Ritzy Bryan (lead vocals, guitar), Rhydian Dafydd (bass guitar, backing vocals), and Matt Thomas (drums, percussion). Official site: http://www.thejoyformidable.com

Why you can't understand the danger, is beyond me! Most of the comment I've read from people that are being enticed by offers from mining companies and other developers, is that most agree to allowing development -- but not at the pace or the scale that the mining companies want to do it! The mining operations want to get in as fast as possible, dig the largest open pits imaginable, and exhaust the resource and make as much money as quick as possible...and move on, since there is always a new opportunity somewhere....even if they have to wait for the CIA to install a banana republic dictator to do it! Most of the natives seem to be smart enough to realize that when they agree to a mine or a pipeline running through their territory, the good times will not last forever....as we can see in places like Alaska, where the original Prudhoe Bay field is almost exhausted, and is not even pumping enough oil to keep the pipeline warm enough to prevent freeze-ups. If they can't find and start exploiting a new field soon, that pipeline will disintegrate faster and a whole new one would have to be built. So, the natives are smart enough to at least realize that non-renewable resources means they have finite limits! I'm glad at least somebody does!

And, even if that bullshit piece could be taken at face value, it would not provide a basis for attacking the Idle No More movement, because it's a grassroots movement that some chiefs (like the favourites of SunMedia) are trying to stop or marginalize, while others are running to try to get in front of the parade. The mostly women leadership of Idle No More across Canada have a better grasp of what's needed and what should be done about corrupt chiefs on isolated reserves who don't want the system changed, but rather prefer to just keep skimming money off the top and keeping the natives under control for the Government. But, what's most objectionable about this racist house organ at the Globe, is that she can't come up with original thoughts herself, so she has to rely on quoting other corporate propagandists at the Globe (columnist Jeffrey Simpson) for inspiration: Finally, it recognizes the mythology of assertions about an indigenous environmental consciousness. The lack of environmental degradation before contact was obviously due to the primitive technology and subsistence economies of hunter gatherers and horticulturalists, not some kind of “sacred link” to the land. Okay, I've said it before, and I'll say it again, so listen up, corporate tools who buy the bullshit that environmental consciousness is a myth! It's not a myth...pure and simple! It's a simple matter of fact for animals that have lived most of their 200,000 year history as modern humans, that until very, very recently, we were captive to the dictates of nature, and had to develop a deep understanding of nature and an appreciation for what nature could provide, and what it could not, or would not! This environmental consciousness did not start to unravel until the Age of Agriculture provided people the opportunity to live in the same places and overtax the land for long periods of time before the soil was finally burned out. But, farmers....even farmers of my father's generation, still had some awareness of the fact that nature was not some giant candy store to be unlocked and plundered for resources! My father abandoned the family farm just before I was born, because he couldn't or refused to adjust to the new agricultural regimen that was imposed on farmers post-WWII....dumping large quantities of oil-based fertilizers instead of rotating crops, growing monocultures instead of a diversity of crops etc. The old agriculture, if not permanently sustainable, could at least maintain the soil for hundreds of years, whereas today's agribusiness will stop as soon as the oil-based fertilizers and mined phosphates stop arriving. So, it's not the natives who are living a myth! It's us....or the majority here who believe in a cornucopia of human ingenuity....of which, I am a dissenter! On many isolated reserves, elders(many of whom were forcibly sent away to boarding schools and lost a lot of their own culture), are trying to teach their young people how to hunt and together, they are trying to relearn what has been lost. The people who march in lock step with the business class and believe their bullshit that we can keep on growing and consuming larger and larger amounts of energy and resources forever, are the ones who are living an illusion....an illusion that will shatter at some point in the coming years!

Who's exaggerating or overstating? The point every theorist I've heard about the origins of our universe is that if one universe can pop into existence, then others can....likely an infinite number. Since you were condescending to me that 'I should learn more about physics before I comment on this subject,' exactly how much have you read about String Theory? Because you give no indication here of being aware that M-Theory was proposed and generated excitement, because by adding that extra dimension to five existing 10 dimensional string theories, Ed Witten was able to show that all five could be harmonized as showing part of the same reality....as he described it - five blindfolded people walking up to an elephant and giving their descriptions based on which part of the elephant they were touching. No one is saying M-Theory is the way to resolve the conflicts between general relativity and quantum mechanics, but physicists will go on hunches and intuitions to, and see how far it carries them. Ever consider that Guth's Inflation Theory is not proven science either? Guth's proposal that the high heat, high density early universe produced a particle dubbed the "inflaton" which worked exactly opposite to gravity, and drive everything apart very rapidly, was seized upon because it is the only way to explain the improbable high degree of flatness of spacetime in our universe. It is very compelling and explains alot of other problems in cosmology besides flatness, but it is still not considered proven. It's more the most likely explanation.

Thanks for the info! It seems that the main difference between Norway and every other oil producer, is that they recognized potential pitfalls early and developed strategies to minimize them, unlike every other oil producer, who go hogwild with the money, and have little thought or care about what comes next until the oil runs out.

I'm sure that Harper and his cronies already have millions of dollars in handshake deals with oil and other resource companies that they will be able to collect on after they are our of office. You're absolutely right that turning Canada from a nation that at least said the right things about environment to one that doesn't even bother with the facade because of the unbridled exploitation of tar sands, is one of the biggest black marks to Canada's international reputation. Add this to the way Harper has turned Canada from a tradition of independence from U.S. foreign policy to one of slavish adherence, and young Canadians today would be well advised not to put Canadian flags on their luggage when traveling outside Canada or the U.S.

I'd be fine if we had no cellphones! You just pulled the wrong example to impress me, since after having my cellphone stolen when my car was broken into 12 years ago, I haven't bought one since or felt the need to. The only way I'll buy one now is if this trend towards eliminating public payphones continues.

I can't let the continued smearing of Luddites go without comment either. Looking at how industrialism progressed through the Industrial Revolution to modern times - where we see the rollback of reforms added during the brief period of the rise of unionism, the truth is that Nathan Ludd was absolutely right in his declaration that the new looms and the factories employing unskilled workers to operate them, would turn people into nothing better than machines themselves and strip from them their freedoms to work and do sell their wares on their own terms. Prior to the textile factories, weavers, tailors, knitters and cobblers were usually self-employed after learning the trade through some informal apprenticeship, and they were payed based on the quality of their work, and could work as much or as little as needed. All that changed when vast numbers of unskilled men, women, boys and girls started filling the textile mills, working long hours at machines that set the pace of work for them.....which after globalization and union-busting on an international scale is exactly what the situation is in the nations like Bangladesh, where most of our clothing is being made today! The profits go mostly to the top of the food chain, and the people who actually do the labour-intensive work make fractions of a fraction of the value of their work. It is exploitation of people that is just as bad, if not worse than at the start of the Industrial Era that Dickens raised alarm about in his novels. But, today, unlike 19th century England, a modern Charles Dickens would have to journey half way around the world to see the debasement of humanity. Dickens only had to go for a walk into the East End of London to see evil created through unbridled capitalism and exploitation of new technology. And this is where globalization adds to the evil....by removing it further from the view of the purchasers of the products!

If, having Yoko Ono show up to support a cause means that the cause is illegitimate, jbg better hope that Yoko doesn't show up supporting Israeli expansion at any AIPAC-sponsored rallies! Aside from the frequently mentioned objections to fracking - fracking companies have had special legislation written giving them a waiver from having to release publicly the results on groundwater testing, or inform the public of what they are putting in fracking fluids that they pump underground with large quantities of water.....endless lines of water trucks clogging and damaging rural roads - we are learning that fracking releases huge amounts of methane (the most damaging greenhouse gas) into the atmosphere.....40 to 60% more methane than conventional natural gas wells: Fracking Would Emit Large Quantities of Greenhouse Gases Robert Howarth, an ecologist and evolutionary biologist, and Anthony Ingraffea, a civil and environmental engineer, reported that fracked wells leak 40 to 60 percent more methane than conventional natural gas wells. When water with its chemical load is forced down a well to break the shale, it flows back up and is stored in large ponds or tanks. But volumes of methane also flow back up the well at the same time and are released into the atmosphere before they can be captured for use. This giant belch of "fugitive methane" can be seen in infrared videos taken at well sites. At this point, it's worth noting that natural gas is not as 'clean' as originally believed because it's only been a few years that scientists have been doing the infrared monitoring of natural gas wells AND PIPLINES! The worst pipelines for methane release, not surprisingly, is the Trans-Siberia Pipeline in Russia, because of its extraordinary length, and substandard, poorly welded construction. So, natural gas....whether from large deposits usually located over oil, or these small gas pockets that are being exploited now through shaking up porous rocks like shales, is still a huge emitter of carbon, and a major contributor to global warming....whether the gas lobby will admit it or not!

As if that will be the end of that particular story! They will keep pushing and trying alternatives to sneak through what they need to meet the greater objective of getting at resources on native lands.

If you start rewriting agreements, like the dramatic cut in the number of protected waterways bundled in with Harper's omnibus bill, a lot of people would turn into fundamentalists too! If I was on the 403 when....I assume Six Nations people set up a sympathy blockade, I might not be happy with it either. But the inconvenience people are sqawking about over blockades, pales in comparison to taking away territory or seizing what's underneath the land at as cheap a price as possible.

I believe I've pointed out a time or two already that I am not a fundamentalist atheist, or an evangelical atheist, so I'm not in the business of trying to convert....or deconvert everyone who believes in a supernatural....and neither is Hawking for that matter! He merely made the observation that the origins and development of our universe can be explained by naturalistic processes without invoking God or the supernatural. The bombast that accompanied the rumbling over that statement is likely thanks to the follow up by his co-writer - Leonard Mlodinow....who is an evangelical new atheist, strongly advocating an end to religions and religious beliefs. So, in respects to how I consider scientific evidence and scientific claims, I mostly have to follow the consensus of expert opinion on these sorts of subjects. When there are problems, like the 20 year quest to connect string theories to testable predictions, there are some theorists, like Lee Smolin would be one example....who advise continuing alternative approaches to resolving the conflicts quantum theory has with gravity. Some theoretical physicists have observed that too many in this elite field are working in the development of string theory, because that's where university physics dept. heads put the research money. So, if a theoretical physicist wants to devote some time on alternatives like Loop Quantum Gravity, they will have a much harder time finding a place that will indulge their hobby. If your point is that there is 'faith' or the equivalent of faith in how the public tries to deal with increasingly complex scientific research, point taken! But, I am more concerned about the fields of medical science than physics, and how the science of medicine is increasingly subject to profit-seeking corporations....like drug companies, who are directly funding more and more of their own research.

I don't know a lot of the details about how Norway managed not to follow the course of other oil exporters....somehow they avoided the hollowing out of their economy that happened to all of the others....even England on the other end of those North Sea deposits....but it would be worth taking a good look at, considering the damaging effects of allowing oil to dominate an economy and political system, and then having to deal with the wreckage after the oil runs out! A former Venezuelan government official made a famous observation over 20 years ago about the double-edged sword nature of oil - calling it "the Devil's Shit" or the equivalent in Spanish as I understand it.

Bullshit! Why should we have to adapt to the demands of the market? Putting aside the obvious fact that the market doesn't really function without interference, the overall decline in happiness and wellbeing in North America since the 1950's, combined with the increase in social isolation (people today report having half as many close friends as those surveyed in the 50's), and a wide range of other measures of sociological research tell us that the market is driving us crazy; making us more materialistic; and making us less satisfied overall. It's time the "market" was adapted to the needs of people, instead of the present system of doing it all backwards. How long are those jobs going to last? Even aside from the obvious catastrophic environmental consequences of increasing tar sands exploitation, these deposits....and every other non-renewable natural resource in the ground is a finite resource. And yet, how is our modern, globalized capitalistic economies responding to resource shortage? By using increasingly greater amounts and becoming more desperate and ruthless in the search for more and more sources of NNR's. A heroin addict who followed this sort of strategy in the quest to satisfy his drug needs would be condemned by society, and yet we have a whole army of economists and policy-makers - from liberal to conservative, who advocate that our economies and way of life function in the same manner as the desperate drug addict who has no regard for consequences of his actions or cares about the future! And, on this note, part of the desperation to find ways to force pipelines through the Oglala Aquifer in the U.S., and the salmon fishing streams of B.C., is the desperate attempt to get bitumen to foreign markets and gain profits. The present course of expanded exploitation of tar sands, doesn't even make sense on economic grounds as it stands now; because without the pipelines to carry it away to the U.S. and China, there will be a glut of heavy oil in local markets....and that will drive the prices down to the point where the huge costs of recovering bitumen and upgrading it to petroleum products isn't even breaking even. A more sensible strategy would be that....if we really do need tar sands oil, we should keep the operations smaller and use it for our own longterm needs.

1:17, 2:07, 3:10, 4:07. Did I miss anything?

Our entire banking system is a con game; it really wouldn't matter what their individual intentions are. Our Bank of Canada mints coins and prints paper money....but on last check, that's only about 5% of our money supply. 95% of new money created in Canadian dollars is by the banks issuing more loans and making money appear by magic! But, that's exactly how the U.S. Federal Reserve and most of the world's other central banks do it....they just turn over the authority to create money to the bankers....or banksters! I picked up a book on the subject of banking....and everything that's wrong with the way our banking system works called: Web Of Debt, by Ellen Hodgson Brown; who also has a blog by the same name. This was an interesting blog post about our system written in April. Between 1939 and 1974, the government actually did borrow from its own central bank. That made its debt effectively interest-free, since the government owned the bank and got the benefit of the interest. According to figures supplied by Jack Biddell, a former government accountant, the federal debt remained very low, relatively flat, and quite sustainable during those years. (See his chart below.) The government successfully funded major public projects simply on the credit of the nation, including the production of aircraft during and after World War II, education benefits for returning soldiers, family allowances, old age pensions, the Trans-Canada Highway, the St. Lawrence Seaway project, and universal health care for all Canadians. The debt shot up only after 1974. That was when the Basel Committee was established by the central-bank Governors of the Group of Ten countries of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), which included Canada. A key objective of the Committee was to maintain “monetary and financial stability.” To achieve that goal, the Committee discouraged borrowing from a nation’s own central bank interest-free, and encouraged borrowing instead from private creditors, all in the name of “maintaining the stability of the currency.” So, since 1974 the Canadian Government has had to do like the U.S. Government, and most of the world's governments when borrowing money - pay interest to a cabal of bankers, who create and loan the money to the government, rather than borrow from their own central banks! No wonder the banks have taken such a huge slice of each nation's wealth, and every nation has ended up indebted to the banks.

Go talk to the people who are trying to advance cosmology then! The general consensus appears to be that you can't have just one universe if you apply the rules of existing physics to cosmology theories like Alan Guth's Inflation Theory.....maybe you don't accept that either! But, from what I've read or listened to from interviews with present day theorists, an Inflation period in the early universe has wide acceptance. And Vilenkin's point is that such a small, hot universe would undergo inflation that would be subject to the rules of quantum mechanics. And, of course you know more about physics than Vilenkin, Neil Turok or Paul Steinhardt? And, I know pretty much as much about cosmology and theoretical physics as I intend to right now. I don't have time to study every subject, so this is one that I will just learn about some of the basic principles, and leave the math and the complex issues for the experts. If they arrive at a consensus....like the general agreement that the energy signal found in a particle collision at the Large Hadron Collider is 99.999% certain to be the Higgs Boson....I'll just take their word on it! For now, what I'm not hearing in cosmology, are single universe theories to explain the origins of our universe. There must be some reason why every version I've heard about is a multiverse, or would lead towards a multiverse theory of origins.

I can't say I like the music, but that video makes me want to believe in reincarnation, and come back as a saxophone.

I think I explain most of my thinking in the previous post to your prior comments. My point is that the benefits shouldn''t all be going to people who do not make things, or create new inventions. Most of the increases in wealth and earnings over the last 20 years are going to people who start with inherited wealth from large estates and through the manipulation of tax and investment laws, have used their money to acquire greater amounts of real wealth. I am very concerned with how our economies are destroying the environment, and using up resources at an increasing rate; but the wealth that is created in the economy should be shared more equitably than it is now. I want to see a flattening of income levels, even if it means I have to pay higher taxes. I'd rather have the satisfaction that everyone's basic needs are being met, and we are moving towards a sustainable economy, than try to grab a bigger slice of the pie.

The basic fundamentals remain: there are more jobs in manufacturing....actually making stuff, than there is by taking things out of the ground and selling them on foreign markets. That should be obvious and if you're half as smart as you think you are, you would already known this was obvious. As for the bubble....this is where things get complicated; and I'm not going to say that just turning back globalization, regressive taxation on wealth, and other economic reforms would turn everything back to the way it was pre-recession. There is a general unwillingness to examine or even look at the connections between environmental degradation and growing resource scarcity, with our present economic woes. If we add up the damages from increasing storms and droughts, the costs of climate change are having a dampening effect on economic growth, and will be even more so in the near future. And, I've covered the issues of resource scarcity previously, and how even one resource - conventional oil, is already putting the brakes on global economic growth -- real economic growth means larger increases in energy use -- which means higher oil prices and greater dependence on expensive unconventional oil -- until economic growth fizzles out -- demand for oil decreases somewhat -- and we are back to square one. So, what's been happening to world economies over the last five years? The way I see it, most of what's wrong with today's economy has been inevitable and was bound to happen....if it wasn't now, it would have been a few years from now when a day of reckoning arrived. Because the fundamental problem is we have an economic system addicted to growth. And growth is essential because modern banking has to keep creating new money through loans, and the only way those loans are payed off is through continued economic growth. A return to flat, no growth economies, as existed prior to a couple of centuries ago, would just be the lead up to total collapse. So, that's why politicians of all stripes, and economists on the left, and economists on the right, are always stuck on the point about how to resume growth. But, what if we've hit the time when our finite world is applying natural limits to our desires to consume more energy and resources? Well, that's when we need a whole new kind of economy, an end to bank-created money, and a political system that guarantees a more equitable share of wealth than the winner-take-all system we have now. Not that it's a likely possibility!

Never let the facts get in the way of a good argument! But is the problem that UAW members get too much? Or that everybody else gets too little? There's a broad consensus that, over the last 30 years, real wages for the typical American worker have stagnated—in contrast to the 30 years before that, when unions thrived and real wages doubled. As an exercise, I asked Dean Baker, from the Center for Economic Policy Research, to calculate informally where wages for the typical working-age American would be if they'd continued to rise as they had done before the 1970s, while the unions were strong and helping to raise living standards for everybody. He determined that somebody between 45 and 55 years old, roughly the average UAW age today, would be making about $25 per hour—which is very close to the $28 per hour the typical UAW member makes. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/archive/auto-bailout-detroit-obama-recession?page=0,2 So, what does that tell us today about what wages workers deserve? In the U.S. example, if Americans hadn't embraced supply side economics, globalization and union-busting legislation that saw organized labour decline in half over a 30 period, the average American worker would be earning what the auto workers were making before a new contract that cut wages in half for new employees! Time to step back and look at the big picture, and take a look at where people place their priorities. How many people have responded to the attack on their wages and living standards by demanding that union workers also be kneecapped and reduced to the same miserable earnings that they take in? May not be a majority, but there sure are a lot of fools out there that carry water for the right wing business class that has been the only segment of society that has seen their earnings rise over the last 30 years! While the people who actually do the work to make the products have had their earnings cut and facing further attack, the people who control wealth and earn more money through the manipulation of money are the only growth industry that exists anymore! Problem is that bankers, investment brokers and insurance brokers, do not produce any tangible products that can be put to use. But they are the ones who profit under a system where money is created out of thin air by banks (fractional reserve banking makes up over 97% of the money supply), and they consume greater and greater amounts of a nation's real wealth merely by collecting debts on money that did not even exist until it was loaned into existence in the first place! So, the choice is to adapt to the new feudalism....where bankers, major shareholders of large corporations, and executives, own 99% of the nation's wealth and control every aspect of society that counts, while the middle class disappears and everyone else goes back to the old system of being the new peasants! Complete insanity! it's not "oil" sands in the first place. That term does not apply to degraded petroleum deposits known as bitumen, and more honestly identified by their previous term - TAR sands. And, nevermind the facts mentioned in that article which show exploiting tar sands is no better than any other resource exploiting industry at creating jobs. And 15 manufacturing jobs are lost for every job created through forcing bitumen out of deep deposits and investing huge amounts of energy to convert it into useable petroleum products....and inflating the value of our dollar, just as happens with every other petrostate in the world! Countries that have more than 20% of their economies devoted to oil, experience a decline in the rest of their economies, and, in the case of undeveloped economies - remain undeveloped except for pumping oil out of the ground. So, here's Canada going from a diverse economy to Saudi Arabia - North, and some people are cheering this! Anyone who is not directly working in this industry or earning money from it by other means, has to be a fool. And that's not even getting to the part where that bitumen in the ground...."that we should be grateful for"....will be the final nail in the coffin of human civilization, if we fully exploit this dirty, carbon-intensive resource to the limits.

This could be filed under the Bleeding Obvious category:Canada Oilsands Boom Passes Ontario Factory Workers: Economy Since part of the reason the Harper Government is on a full court press to diminish native sovereignty is connected with the grand scheme of turning Canada from a manufacturing economy back into a resource seller, reality is expressing a differing opinion than Harper and his Conservative and business cronies: Harper and his cabinet ministers have argued that developing Alberta’s oilsands, part of the world’s third largest oil reserves, will bring economic opportunity across the country. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver estimates that more than 600 major resource projects may lead to C$650 billion of investment over the next decade. “A strong resource sector in the west means high-quality manufacturing jobs in the east,” Harper said Jan. 4 at a Ford Motor Co. of Canada Ltd. factory in Oakville, Ontario. The numbers suggest otherwise. Companies in the mining, quarrying and oil and gas industries have increased payrolls by 11,700, or 4.4 percent over the five years to the end of 2012, according to Statistics Canada data. Over the same period, manufacturing employment has dropped by 182,900, or 9.4 percent, as factories struggle with the impact of a strong currency and weak global demand. Factory Firings Put another way, for every natural resource job that’s been added in Canada since the end of 2007, more than 15 factory jobs have been lost.

Let's put it this way, National Post is a mouthpiece for Harper and the mining and oil industries that likely are more likely the true authors of all of Harper's omnibus legislation that applies to first nations' territories. It's nothing more than shear greed....we've gobbled up all the oil, so now we need to dig up all the tar sands....sorry about your lakes and rivers....here's a few dollars to the band council for compensation! Same with the mining interests! And according to conservativespeak, "moderate" natives are the ones who take a few bucks and sign away their treaty rights (most of the profits going to the willing chiefs) and "fundamentalists" are all natives who actually care about their land and might even want something better than a few years of money flowing in, followed by a permanent degraded landscape that is of no value for hunting or fishing! Some natives have turned down mining interests and pipeline proposals in spite of the money waved in their faces because they don't want to play this game of exploiting resources at all costs....that we have locked ourselves into down here. When resources were really plentiful in Canada, not a great deal of thought was given to sovereignty of lands considered worthless down here. But, in an oligarchy, if there's billions of dollars to be made by resource developers, they don't give a rats ass about treaties that were written and signed decades ago. They'll just ignore them, rewrite everything and plow ahead....unless the natives play hardball. And this is where a lot of low information selfish Canadians better start waking up and start thinking about promises made by our governments over the years on our behalf: Native Canadians could block development, chief warns "These are demands, not requests," said Nepinak. "The Idle No More movement has the people - it has the people and the numbers - that can bring the Canadian economy to its knees. It can stop Prime Minister Stephen Harper's resource development plan," Nepinak told reporters in Ottawa. I guess those "fundamentalists" could be a problem for those thinking the natives will just roll over and go back into the shadows.

And they're developed from the same theoretical physics that made it possible to design and build the computer you're using to browse the internet and make comments! Just because we don't understand the math, doesn't mean that nobody does. The problem is that the math gets more and more difficult as physicists try to peer back into the beginning of our universe, and fewer and fewer are able to follow along and develop approaches to reach the goal of 'the end of physics.' So, the big question is not whether there are other universes....that's almost certain just based on what's been learned about our universe so far. The real question is whether the great a priori assumption of science - that the universe is completely understandable by humans applying the scientific method and we can be able to answer all of the fundamental questions about nature.