Same-Sex Marriage Rights:
Conservatives are not the Patent Holders on ‘Marriage’
religion.lilithezine.com – Sept 11, 2009
The debate continues to rage on about same-sex marriage rights.  In California flaming wildfires and flaming same-sex marriage partners are given equal treatment under the law: They are both invited to take a cold shower.  Behind the debate is the more fundamental debate over the use of the word ‘marriage’. It is almost as if conservatives are the patent holders on the term ‘marriage’ and same-sex proponents are infringing on that patent.

http://religion.lilithezine.com/Patenting-Marriage.html

california · cold · html · http · location · marriage · Religion · sex

There has been a spate of activity in the nanotech realm lately. Over the past few months I’ve tracked several new developments. Here they are in no particular order: spine, ram, solar cell, ca

1) Solar Power: The problem with solar technology is the high cost of the solar cells. The current level of technology in solar is in silicon wafer solar cells. They have low relative effeciency and a high relative cost. This makes them unfeasible as a replacement. Many companies, amont them Nanosolar of California, have developed a technology using nanoparticles which can absorb light more efficiently, but more importantly, more economically. Nanosolar is targetting a rate of $1/watt which would make solar power a viable alternative over nuclear or fossil fuels.

More amazing is the fact that the solar films can be mass produced and printed on to any building or surface. More details can be found here: http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10989479
http://www.nanosolar.com/

2) Cancer Treatments:This story warms my heart on so many levels. John Kanzius was himself diagnosed with Leukemia. He underwent several bouts of painful chemotherapy. Not a physician but instead a retired radio and television engineer, he had a brainwave one night while sleeping. He came up with the idea of using radio waves to selectively target cancer cells while leaving the remaining healthy cells unscathed. Chemotherapy is based on the differential survivability of cancerous cells versus healthy cells. That is to say the chemicals used are toxic to both healthy and cancer cells, and the hope is that the cancer cells die out faster than the healthy ones: not a promising prospect.

Kanzius’ idea is remarkably different. He plans to send nanoparticles of gold into the tumor. He plans to use a targeting molecule attached to the gold nanoparticle to saturate the tumor with particles. Then he directs a highly concentrated radio beam towards the tumor. The gold heats up under influence of this beam and essentially the tumor is cooked.

3) RAM-Memory: Hard discs have had a good run. They’ve given us a terabyte of storage at nominal cost and with reasonable access time. The technology of the future however will but much smaller, with no operating parts to wear out. The technology is called ‘Racetrack’ and is being developed in the Almaden Research Center in San Jose California. At the heart of the technology electron spin is used to code information. This information races along a nanowire at blazing speeds with very low power consumption. Future incarnations of this technology promise replace hard discs an allow for near instantaneous start up and uncompromising reliability.

4) Spinal Repair: We all recall fondly the heroic efforts of Christopher Reeve to bring about an awareness of spinal injury and the tragic effects it can have on the sufferers and their families. The problem with spinal injury, indeed most nerve injury, is that the injured site (referred to as a transection) forms a scar at either end of the cut bundle. Nerves do have the ability to regrow however, they lack the ability to bridge this scar. John Kessler, M.D., Davee Professor of Stem Cell Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine has come up with a gel of self assembling nanostructures which is injected at the injury site. Once inside, they go to work assembling a scaffolding which allows neural stem cells to bridge the gap. Mice with spinal injuries were injected with the compound and showed significant improvement including the ability to walk again.

almaden research center · california · cancer · cancer treatment · cent · chemicals · Chemotherapy · christopher reeve · economist · flu · gold · head · Health · html · http · ibm · ILS · injury · injury site · Internet · John Kanzius · john kessler · Kanzius Machine · Leukemia · levis · nanoparticles · nanosolar · nanotechnology · nanotubule · nerve injury · Northwestern University · Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine · physician · professor · Professor of Stem Cell Biology · racetrack memory · radio · radio and television engineer · RAM · Red · scar · solar · solar power · solar technology · spinal chord · spinal injuries · spinal injury · stem cell · stem cells · technology electron spin · technology promise · technology using nanoparticles · transection · tumor · USD

The State of The Union – As Seen on TV
Martin C. Winer

But first a word about how this article was written:  This article was the result of a ‘cluster’ or a free-word association.  This is an exercise which is meant to use the ‘right brain’ to spur creativity and generate writing topics.  You can create your own clusters or bubbles here: http://www.bubbl.us/ but it’s best to do them with pen and paper since one tends to self edit when typing.  Each word you see italicized below is from the cluster.  Usually, the idea is to take one theme from the cluster and write about it.  I thought it would be a challenge to include ALL the words and still have the article tell a cohesive story.   Read the article, taking note of the italicized words.  Then see the cluster below.

I have been worried about the state of the world as of late.  Being recently unemployed with no meaningful job on the horizon, I was wondering when I’d be returning to the 9-5 lifestyle.  It’s not that I ravish 9-5, as Dolly Parton’s famous song correctly puts it, 9-5 is all “takin and no giving” but it beats aimlessly strolling on sidewalks waiting for a direction to unfold.  Up until recently I was a member of the over 30 and unmarried class.  Fortune changes quickly and I now find myself suddenly being married with children.  The responsibilities are understandably far different.  Curious as to what direction my life would take over the next months and years, I turned on the familiar glowing oracle fitted in every living room, the television.

While I waited for my big screen TV, a vestige of my former employed self, to come to life, I recalled that a comic had mentioned that Dolly Parton had insured her breasts.  I wondered if the comic was putting us on, as he was apt to do.  Would an insurance company take premiums for such a ridiculous item?  What was the counterparty risk?  Were her breasts in good hands with Allstate (TM)?  The TV came to life with the evening news reporting of another hemorrhage on Wall Street of 213 ethereal points, with AIG requesting more bailout money.  Evidently, indeed, insurance companies would take premiums on just about anything and the only boobs in the interaction were the policy holders who actually thought the policy was worth something.  Bored with the evening news I changed the channel.

Dick Cheney was on “State of the Union” with John King on CNN.  Cheney, a bastion of the old guard was set to be ‘grilled’ by King as to the sins of his administration.  I flipped right past the interview because I knew it could not yield the satisfaction I was seeking.  Waterboarding and assassination squads would be second nature to a man like Cheney who shot his hunting partner in the face.  Waterboarding I imagined was just his technique for cleaning his felled game, human or otherwise.  I wasn’t interested in the past, I was curious to know what my future held.

There was an infomercial on with 90 year old Jack Lalanne sporting his leisure suit and his juicer.  I am a late night TV watcher and infomercials plague the airwaves from dusk ‘til dawn.  Jack Lalanne was born in 1914 and looked to be in better health than myself all thanks to his 1/2 horsepower juicer.  In went an orange, apple, and every other healthy fruit your mother tried to get you to eat as a child.  Out poured a fountain of youth which had purportedly kept Lalanne in such great shape over these many years, yet somehow, it hadn’t managed to save his fashion sense.  The leisure suit was last popular when the juice on everyone’s lips was Juice Newton, “Grease” was the new movie and disco was still in style.  I was intrigued with the notion of extended life and wondered if indeed Lalanne’s juicer could provide it.  Even if it could, what would my life be like, aged 90+ years drinking fruit and vegetables all day?  Would my life be fulfilling?  I changed the channel seeking an answer from the glowing oracle of TV.

The next infomercial was for Extenz tablets; an all natural ‘Male Enhancement’.  Well this held some promise now didn’t it?  At least my latter years could be herbally augmented with extra length and girth.  But just what were these pills I thought to myself?  “An all natural male enhancement?” I wondered to myself.  Didn’t we already have such a thing in Dolly Parton?  What were these herbs and how were they discovered?  Did someone eat a salad with wild herbs one night with shocking results in the bedroom?  How did they then suspect the salad and not anything else?  My mind was awash with questions and I wasn’t much in the thinking mood.  I wanted answers, not questions.  Come on oracle of television, what would my life be like?  The only effort I was willing to exert was in flipping channels.

Yet as I flipped there were a plethora of Viagra and its new copy Cialis ads.  Was the television intimating that my future would need these?  A Viagra ad promised that at age 50 I could trade in my sedan for a Harley Davidson and with one pill have the vigor of a 20 year old.  A Cialis ad promised 36 hour or daily dosing options to make sure I would be able to respond when the mood was right.  If I was as old as Jack Lalanne, would my wife still be ready for me?  I’d be worried about breaking bones at that age.  Another flip would quell that fear.

Once a month Boniva would rebuild my wife’s bones without the need to remember a weekly pill.  There would be no need to take those chalky calcium pills once a day.  Of course memory at that age will be compromised so the once a month dosing is ideal.  Side effects could include liver and kidney disease but at least you would only have to endure them once a month.  God bless Big Pharma.  I could have a once a day boner and my wife could have healthy bones all month.  I was comforted that the future would be bright.  My comfort was not long lasting, at least not as long lasting as 36 hour Cialis promised to be, when it occurred to me that Big Pharma was suffering from a horrible case of misplaced priorities.  With all of their attention focused on bones and boners, they had dropped the two big balls of cancer and heart disease.  I curiously imagined a big Pharma strategizing kick off meeting with people brainstorming on new drug targets and somehow bones and boners getting to the top of the list over cancer and heart disease.  I only hoped that Jack Lalanne’s fountain of youth Juice could get my wife and I past those two roadblocks.

I calmed myself thinking that my 90th year was well off, I being only 35 now.  Big Pharma had time to readjust their priorities.  I continued my flipping to discover yet another Big Pharma commercial for Requip, a medication for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS).  My legs were perfectly atrophied into their TV watching position.  I didn’t believe that such a condition could occur.  “My doctor said ‘Requip’” said the announcer as a television doctor mouthed “Requip”.  I imagined that the doctor mouthed “bullsh*t” in response to the patients complaint.  [0u92R90U R ‘ jixz-]0039;ffaS980059-09ATRE MT3.  Oops, I’m ever so sorry about that previous mess, you see my arms tend to spontaneously move uncontrollably every so often…  Oh my, could it be I have Restless Arms Syndrome (RAS)?  Well at least I know that Big Pharma is on the case.  Perhaps if I ingest Requip while standing on my head, the medication will settle in the appropriate appendages?  Parenthetically I wonder if all Requip contains is a bottle of gel caps filled with Brandy?  All it seemed Big Pharma could do for me in my latter years was give calm legs and arms and a rock hard erection.  The Viagra commercial warned that any erection lasting over 4 hours constituted a medical risk and thus I knew my fulfillment from Big Pharma would leave me with 20 remaining hours in the day to fill with what?  What would I do?  I looked to the financial stations to see if I had any prospect of finding a job.

CNBC was heralding the success of the latest Apple Computer quarterly results.  The IPhone and the IPod were unrelenting successes.  The host discussed the failing health of Steve Jobs as a concern for the future of the company and since we now know all that Big Pharma is good for, the concern is justified.  I myself am not a gadget freak.  I often mockingly eye people walking down the street sweaty palmed typing at lunatic speeds on their Palm, Blackberry or blueberry or whatever the latest berry is.  I have no need to be so totally connected, but evidently there is a huge market for these devices.  Just the same I was delighted to see the success of Apple whose Macintosh computer was, in my mind, the superior computer in 1985.  Bill Gates was the smarter CEO, not the better innovator.  Steve Jobs didn’t allow clones of Macintosh’s while Gates allowed clones of the PC.  As a result Apple’s market share fell like Newton’s apple under newly discovered gravity.  With all the discussion of executive compensation these days, I think Steve Jobs deserves the lion’s share of the reward when it comes to innovation.  The IPod is simple to use media device which takes advantage of the recent wave of music piracy and MP3’s that puts the tale of the Maersk Alabama to shame.  Now don’t get me wrong, copyright infringement was not created by Jobs, he only capitalized on it.  The IPhone is the next logical extension of a handheld computing device incorporating maps, navigation and a whole host of other useful features we come to expect from Apple.  The Macintosh, the IMac as it’s now called, is gaining market share in leaps and bounds.  I guessed that I had attained some inspiration from the glowing oracle;  perseverance, like that of Steve Jobs in the face of constant opposition and I too could one day go on to innovate a pile of handheld devices – or something like that.  Of course this special was being aired on CNBC the so called financial news network that managed to complete miss any predictions of the financial collapse which had claimed my job.  I wasn’t about to take any advice from them.  No, the Corruption National Broadcasting System as I had renamed them would have to find another mark. I dismissed them with a flip of the channel.

The Cheney Interview was over on CNN and now Anderson Cooper on A.C. 360 was sporting a pie chart showing the distributions of the American reinvestment Plan.  There were huge allotments for infrastructure building projects.  A clip revealed workers building bridges all over the country.  Wasn’t it another Democratic president who wanted to build a bridge to the 21st century?  Now are we building bridges out of Chapter 11?  There was discussion of incentives to homeowners to renovate and rejuvenate their properties.  I thought of stopping in at Home Depot but immediately balked because the 27 minute hand waving discussion with 17 year old ‘Skippy’ who works there never seems to get me the results I want.  For all the talk of hope and economic plans CNN was pushing out, I knew that the recession was receding faster than Dick Cheney’s hairline.

Rembrant - Raising of Lazarus

Then they aired a clip of the master of hope: President Obama.  “America has been great and shall rise to be great again” he prophesized.  I thought this had a familiar tone.  I quickly switched to the Catholic Television Service and the pastor proudly boomed “and the phoenix shall rise out of the ashes just as Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead.”  The pastor went on to solicit donations for a new building project.  This also had familiar overtones and I flipped back quickly to CNN.  “It will take considerable investment from us all but we shall rebuild and come back stronger” proudly acclaimed Obama.  It then occurred to me that Obama was more than just a President, he was our primary minister.  He then intimated at his plan to remove toxic assets from the books of the banks without providing the necessary details I was looking for; undoubtedly he would turn water into wine.  The rhetoric of hope was overflowing my ears and I needed a counter position to ground myself again.  Luckily there was the FOX network who was lambasting Obama as the bane of humanity whose short stint in office had already thrown the economy into apocalypse from which only a miracle could now save us.

Putin and other former Soviet interviewees were quoted as saying that the end of capitalism has finally come.  A commentator remarked: “the American dream of picket fences has been replaced by picket lines” as the video showed protesting auto workers.  Am auto worker protested: “The companies are trying to divide and conquer us, taking advantage of this downturn to cut our benefits and pay.  I say enough taxing the middle class!”  Cheers and hurrahs followed.  My brain was like a pair of Levi’s jeans iconically being pulled by these two polarized stations in opposite directions, at the risk of ripping.  There had to be some truth on the glowing oracle of television.  PBS I thought to myself quickly.  That will save me.

Jim Lehrer

(Ed. Note: Actually it’s IOWA that is ok with Gay Rights, not Oklahoma.  In my cluster, I confused the two, but I went with it because the challenge was to write an article using all the clustered words.  I was only off by a 10 hour drive anyways.    )

Public Broadcasting, publicly funded and publicly ignored in favour of watching MTV to hear if Britney Spears of Lindsay Lohan were wearing underwear today.  Today Jim Lehrer was discussing the state of Gay Rights.  Evidently in Ahnold’s (sic) California the rights of gays have been ‘terminated’.   Ironically, Oklahoma seems “Ok” with gay marriage.  Is that what the song “Oklahoma, OK” is about from the musical Oklahoma?  The world seemed upside down.  Had I inverted myself such that Requip went to my arms and forgot about it?  Oklahoma was a place where I expected politicians to spout the bible about ‘being Fruitful and multiplying’ and how homosexuality was unnatural.  In liberal California, I expect them to say anything goes, from Gay Rights to cloning dolly the sheep.  After all doesn’t Hotel California by the Eagles promise “Plenty of room at the Hotel California / Any time of year, you can find it here”?  I couldn’t make sense of my world.  I was about as comfortable as a man swimming in itchy wool trunks.  I needed to flip the channel quickly.

Kim Kardashian

Chicks Who Love Guns

Up next was a documentary “American Justice” revisiting the O.J. Simpson trial.  It brought back names like Mezza Luna, Nicole Brown, Robert Kardashian, Kim Kardashian… whoops my mind wandered.  Robert Kardashian had helped set a murderer free but brought us Kim Kardashian.  Now they say justice should be blind, but have you seen Kim Kardashian?  He was off the hook in my books but the rest of the characters who let O.J. go were open to attack in my imagination.  I recast the events of that fateful night as a Quentin Tarantino movie.  I’d have my justice, if only in my imagination.  Nicole Brown would now be Jackie Brown.  She would seductively seduce O.J. by dancing for him like Salma Hayek in Tarantino’s “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn”.  She’d then immediately turn into a vampire and eat him alive.  Next, Travolta and Samuel Jackson from Pulp Fiction would show up and after quoting Ezekiel 25:17 would lace into the O.J. lawyers.  Finally the women from “Chicks who love Guns” as seen in Jackie Brown, armed with the AK-47 and they would deal with every “mother [t]ucker” in the jury room.  Returning from my daydream I realized that 10 years had passed and there was no justice to be spoken of.  The only thing I had learned from the episode was that justice is a function of wealth and that O.J. stood for Orenthall James, not Orange Juice.  I’m not admitting I was that stupid however, I’m about to write another article: “If I was that stupid, here’s how I’d admit it.”

I knew how the O.J. saga ended so I flipped again to see what else was on the glowing oracle.  John Sebastian crooned “Welcome Back, to the same old place where you started from…”  It was a rerun of Welcome Back Kotter.  Truly, I was basically back where I had started from, only an hour of flipping elapsed.  I knew nothing more of the future than when I started.  Sure I knew that my bones and boners would be safe, boobs could be insured, and that if I worked very hard, I might find a job.  But I was looking for important answers to important questions like, what would justice be like in the future?  What would the economy be like?  I was sure that Kotter’s Vinni Barbarino wasn’t going to be able to answer my questions.  With that, I turned off the glowing oracle for the night.

‘Apple’ cluster which generated the article.

This is the free word association (or cluster, or bubble) which generated the article.  Again, each italicized above came from the cluster below.

9 to 5 · 9/11 · AID · aig · AK-47 · ale · allstate · America · american justic · Announcer · apple · arnold schwarzenegger · auto workers · bailout · bank · bankruptcy · bible · bill gates · blog · boniva · bubble · california · cancer · capitalism · Case · cent · chapter 11 · chicks who love guns · cialis · cluster · dca · dick cheney · dolly parton · eagles · Economy · Executive · extenze · Ezekiel 25:17 · free word association · gay rights · God · grease · head · Health · heart disease · home depot · homosexuality · hotel california · http · ibm · ILS · insurance · Internet · iphone · ipod · jack lalanne · Jackie Brown · jim lehrer · John Sebastian · John Travolta · juice newton · kim kardashian · king · lawyer · lazarus · levis · life · logic · maersk · maersk alabama · marriage · Martin C. Winer · MIT · mp3 · Music · nature · O. J. Simpson · obama · OJ · oklahoma · palm blackberry · piracy · pirates · President · Pulp Fiction · quentin tarantino · quote · Red · requip · rls · Robert Kardashian · Rome · Salma Hayek · sex · steve jobs · Tarantino · viagra · video · Vinni Barbarino · waterboarding · wealth · Welcome Back Kotter · writing

Inglourious Basterds : Bastardizing Holocaust Remembrance

Martin C. Winer

A comedy about nothing may be quite clever but a Holocaust movie about nothing is irresponsible at best.  For many years after the Holocaust, the film world observed a mourning period not even willing to touch the topic.  Then a spate of films came out seeking to portray with the utmost realism the horrors that had occurred.  The screenwriters did not use their imaginations in constructing the screenplays since Nazi imagination was as evil as it was complete.  Screenwriters dedicated themselves instead to rendering a faithful reproduction of those tragic events.

But now it seems as though enough time has passed such that the Holocaust can serve as comic foil to wrap and serve a helping of Quentin Tarentino gratuituous violence.  In Tarantino’s earlier works like Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction, violence was a backdrop against which he nourished his viewers with rich character development.  Many remember the character of Max Cherry, a Bail Bondsman who discovered the Delfonics and his youth in a passing romance with Jackie Brown.  Tarantino’s unique gift is in providing full Technicolor hues to seemingly ordinary characters.  In this sense, Inglourious Basterds fails as a Tarantino movie long before it fails as a movie dealing with the Holocaust.

The characters of this film are two dimensional and black and white.  Despite ample opportunity to shed light on the characters, the closest Tarantino comes is in his depiction of Col. Landa who is a master rat in a world of rats.  The closest Tarantino comes to any sort of message is delivered through Landa who reports that a squirrel and a rat are both very similar rodents, yet only the rat is detested.  By extension the reason Tarantino provides that the Jews have been so heavily targeted is a childish “Just So” story.  Any search for a broader meaning to the film will fall as flat as the remaining characters.

Beyond failed character development this film often offers mere caricatures.  Brad Pitt’s performance was notably poor in that he offers only a hyperbolic rendition of an American of southern descent with an obnoxious accent.  The ‘Basterds’ – a troupe of American Jewish soldiers out to scalp Nazis – are equally hollow depictions of people bent on revenge.  Tarantino shines at bringing out characters in films set in California.  But when it comes to developing characters in war torn Europe, it seems that he has bitten off more than he can chew.

The ending of the film is as disappointing as the character development.  Tarantino offers an alternate ending to World War II where the Nazis are brought down by a cunning act of espionage and subterfuge.  Anyone with the slightest sense of history will watch with raised eyebrows comparing this with the real ending of over 60 million people dead before Hitler and his Reich met its end.  To end Hitler with the flick of Tarantino’s pen, even though this be a work of fiction, seems irreverent of a painful history.

The ultimate concern of such a film is brought out in a line from the very film itself:  “Goebbels considers the films he’s making to be the beginning of the new era… an alternative to … the German-Jewish intellectual cinema of the 20’s.”  If Tarantino has decided for himself that it’s time to move beyond the painful and historically correct depictions of Holocaust films past, and that instead the Holocaust can be used as a mere backdrop for contemporary drama, what era in film making will this usher in?

America · Brad Pitt · california · cent · Colonel · Europe · German-Jewish intellectual cinema · Hitler · holocaust · ILS · Jackie Brown · Jews · king · Landa · Martin C. Winer · Max Cherry · oil · Pulp Fiction · RAM · Red · Tarantino · ultimate concern · usher

Toronto Plastic Bag Research Full of Holes

Martin C. Winer

The City of Toronto has undertaken a goal of 70% waste diversion from landfill.  In order to achieve this goal, City Council asked staff to prepare a report [1] which considers plastic bags along with several other ‘target materials’.  Insofar as plastic bags are concerned, both the preliminary research and the resulting plastic bag tax by-law are full of holes.  One hopes that they are printed on recycled paper because that is likely the only good either will do for the environment.

Legal Foundation:

City staff typically requests legal counsel in preparing their reports.  The October 2008 report concluded that the City of Toronto did not have the authority to impose a plastic bag tax based on the powers afforded it under the City of Toronto Act.  The City of Toronto Act (Section 8(2)) gives the city the right to issue by laws pertaining to the “Economic, social and environmental well-being of the City.” [2] The city staff believed that a plastic bag tax which would appeal to this provision “is not possible under the current City of Toronto Act, which only permits a sales tax to be applied to alcohol, tobacco and admission on places of amusement.” [3] The word ‘plastic’ is not only a noun but also an adjective meaning capable of being molded.  Evidently the legal eagles in City Council were able to use the latter meaning of ‘plastic’ to mold the blunt instrument of “environmental well-being” into a targeted attack on plastic bags.

Staff recommended a discount to incentivize reduction, not a punitive surtax

“A tax or fee on plastic retail shopping bags is not feasible under the City of Toronto Act, but the waste reduction benefit of a financial incentive is apparent.” [4] The city staff thus recommended that the City incentivize reduction via mandating a discount for using reusable bags.  “Staff recommends a per-bag discount of $0.10 to effectively drive source reduction behaviour by providing a reasonable financial incentive to reduce plastic retail shopping bag use.” [5] If City staff recommended a per bag discount, why does the resulting by-law impose a per bag tax?  Galen Weston, CEO of the Loblaws chain, caught wind of the impending legislation and paid Mayor Miller a visit.  He suggested that offering a 10 cent discount would be “prohibitive” and negotiated a 5 cent surtax instead. [6] Bearing in mind the ‘hard bargain’ Mayor Miller drove in resolving the garbage strike, it’s likely that Mayor Miller let Weston finish his plea and then in a ‘Jerry Maguire moment’ told him: “You had me at ‘hello’.”

Plastic Bags Levy has the luck of the Irish

In March 2002 the Irish government introduced a levy on plastic bags (colloquially referred to as the “PlasTax”).  The report to council claims that the Irish program was a huge success with: “a 94% reduction in the use of plastic bags (from 328 bags per capita to 21 bags per capita) in three years.” [7] As is often the case with political speak, the devil is in the details.  ‘A 94% reduction’ where?  Perhaps the supermarkets realized a 94% reduction in demand, but are we to believe that the Irish suddenly stopped lining their kitchen bins with plastic?  Charlie Mayfield chairman of UK retailer John Lewis remarked that the Irish tax “had reduced [retail] plastic bag usage, but sales of bin liners had increased 400 per cent.” [8] With regards to a meaningful reduction in plastic bags making it to the landfill, diminishing the supply at the supermarket ‘borrows from Peter to pay Paul’.

Why 5 cents?

Staff’s report also suggests that the Irish PlasTax “charged 15 Euro cents ($0.24 CAN) starting in 2002 and was raised to 22 Euro cents ($0.35 CAN) in 2007.” [9] The fee needed to be raised because “The use of bags increased to 33 bags per capita in early 2007, prompting officials to raise the levy.” [10] Staff’s further research revealed that: “a per-bag fee of $0.10 to $0.35 [(CAN)] would significantly reduce the consumer use of retail plastic shopping bags.” [11] Thus it’s a mystery how City Council arrived at a 5 cent levy in the face of their own research which suggests the amount is too low to be effective.

What about Paper Bags?

There is a conspicuous absence of paper bags in the staff report.  Recall that, historically, plastic bags were brought in to replace paper bags which were considered deleterious to the environment.  Conversely the final by-law states: “Persons carrying on a retail business in a retail business establishment who do not offer or provide plastic retail shopping bags to customers shall offer or provide alternatives, such as cardboard boxes or paper bags, at no charge to the customer.” [12] In fact, in Taiwan where a plastic bag levy was imposed, it was subsequently lifted in the case of fast food venues because too many were offering free paper bags, thus increasing overall pollution.

In Manhattan Beach, California the ‘Save the Plastic Bag Coalition’ launched a successful action against the municipality which had banned the sale of plastic bags.  In his ruling, The Honorable David P. Yaffe wrote: “The basis for challenge is that the adoption of the ordinance violates the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) because the City did not adopt an Environmental Impact Report that compares plastic bags and paper bags and determines which of the two has a greater negative impact on the environment.” [13] Ruling in favour of the challenge he continues: “The Administrative Record in this case contains substantial evidence to support a fair argument that the prohibition of the distribution of plastic bags to customers will result in a net increase, rather than a net decrease, in damage to the environment.” [14]

Misleading Statistics

A philosopher, a mathematician and a statistician are all asked “what is 2 + 2”.  The philosopher ruminates for several days and eventually asks “what do you mean by 2 + 2?”  The mathematician quickly says “4” and then proceeds to issue a 400 page proof thereof.  The statistician draws the blinds and closes the door and asks “what do you want the answer to be?”  There are evidently many statisticians at work in the city staff:

“Conclusions from Stewardship Ontario audit data (2005), presented to the In-Store Packaging Waste Diversion Working group, estimate an average of 8.8 plastic retail shopping bags generated, per household, per week in Toronto. This represents a total generation in Toronto of 457.6 million plastic retail shopping bags per year and, with each bag weighing 6 grams, 2745.6 tonnes per year, which is approximately 6,900 cubic meters of landfill capacity per year. Plastic bags do not degrade significantly over time and therefore this volume of plastic bags will persist if landfilled.” [15]

These statistics are meaningless in that they neglect to mention how many of the plastic bags are recycled or reused.  The plastic bags of concern are the ones which are the surplus bags which are thrown out empty.  These statistics make no attempt to distinguish between the source and use of the plastic bags.

The City of Toronto currently accepts plastic bags for recycling in their Blue Box Program.  How many of the 8.8 plastic bags per week are thus recycled?  Plastic bags are frequently reused as trash bin liners, indeed green box liners.  How many of the 8.8 plastic bags were used as garbage bags?  Succinctly, don’t judge a pile of trash simply by its cover.

While the City of Toronto decries plastic’s inability to degrade, they are talking out of both sides of their legislative mouths when they then forbid retailers from offering compostable plastic bags: “Retail business[es] … are prohibited from offering or providing … non-compatible plastic bags,” (City of Toronto By-law No. 356-2009, 604-4)  Non-compatible bags in turn are those “that are not compatible with the City’s blue bin recycling program and includ[ing] … biodegradable plastic bags or compostable plastic bags…” (City of Toronto By-law No. 356-2009, 604-1) [16] The use of compostable bags is prohibited because they interfere with the recycling of regular plastic bags!

Further, the staff report fails to mention how much 6,900 cubic meters of landfill capacity is as a proportion of the total.  The 2005 Solid Waste Multiyear Business Plan mentions that in “2003, about 1 million tones of material were collected from 1,000,000 units.” [17] So if we take 2745.6 tonnes per year and divide through by 1,000,000 tonnes per year, we get 0.2%.  So after all the fuss and commotion, City Council has managed to achieve 0.2% of its 70% goal.  There is an old Greek idiom which runs “the mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.  If this be virtue, then Mayor Miller’s environmental stewardship is saintly in that his millstones have ground both very slowly and with exceedingly small results.

[2] http://www.canlii.ca/en/on/laws/stat/so-2006-c-11-sch-a/latest/so-2006-c-11-sch-a.html Section 8(2)

[3] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)

[4] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)

[5] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 12)

[6] http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/toronto/archive/2009/06/01/5-cent-bag-tax-now-in-effect.aspx

[7] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p. 11)

[8] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article3508263.ece

[9] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (pps. 11-12)

[10] ibid

[11] ibid

[12] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/By-laws/2009/law0356.pdf (604, 3C)

[13] http://www.savetheplasticbag.com/UploadedFiles/Manhattan Beach ruling.pdf

[14] ibid

[15] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2008/pw/bgrd/backgroundfile-17097.pdf (p.
[16] http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/By-laws/2009/law0356.pdf

[17] http://www.toronto.ca/garbage/pdf/2005_plan.pdf (p.28)

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