http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080410153643.htm

This recent study shows reveals that humans do like the birds and bees when they make like the birds and bees.  That is to say, there is tremendous evidence in the animal kingdom of the exchange of sex for resources and vice versa.  Humans, it would seem, not immune to this sort of behaviour despite any influences of class or caste. 

In my study of biology, I attended a class at 8am in the dead of winter broadly titled “Animals”.  The class lacked anything wild despite its title and it was an exercise just to keep my eyes open.  Don’t get me wrong, our Prof was a nice enough guy, it’s just I don’t function at that hour.

One day though our professor Kenneth Davey took a tangent into the mating rituals of the fly family Empidae.  He showed a progression in the evolution of nuptial gifts — the process of exchanging resources for sex — across several members of the family in the following progression.

1) The male mates with the female and is eaten by the female.

2) The male brings a food gift to the female hoping that while she’s eating the gift he can do the deed and escape in a hurry.  They mate, she eats the food he brought her followed by him for dessert. 

3) The male brings a food gift wrapped in a grass wrapping.  While she busily unwraps the grass wrapping, he’s able to ‘wham bam and thank you maam’ before she manages to open the package.  He escapes and she at least is able to enjoy her food.

4) The male brings a package to the female.  As she unwraps it he, as before, completes the deed and escapes.  She finally unwraps the package only to discover that it’s empty.

I have too many comments to offer about this tale, so instead I’ll offer none.  I’d imagine your assessment of this story will be highly dependent on your perspective. 

ale · cent · empidae · evolution · flu · food · food gift · http · Kenneth Davey · king · nuptial gifts · professor · resources · sex

I recently took in a lecture by Neil Turok of Cambridge University.  The lecture referred to an equation of all known physics to date.  Turok comments that it is currently incomplete but explains millions of experiments with only 18 free variables.

Without further ado, here is the equation:

Here is a link to the lecture:
http://www.perimeterinstitute.ca/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=551&Itemid=568&lecture_id=6462

Cambridge University · cent · equation · http · Neil Turok · php · Red · string theory

I typically shy away from watching American Idol. I find watching peoples hopes dashed by ‘judges’ akin to watching humans flayed by gladiators to the amusement of the dullard populace. Parenthetically, I wonder how the objectively questionable voices of legends: Louis Armstrong, Neil Young, Bob Dylan or Robert Plant would survive the scrutiny of the bastions of talent assessment found in judges: Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, and Paula Abdul. Paula Abdul. My automatic grammar checker is telling me that the sentence “Paula Abdul.” on its own is a sentence fragment; I couldn’t disagree with it more in this context. In fact, I find it to be a full paragraph.While I find the show irksome, mustering the power to ‘turn the other cheek’ is about as hard as turning to another channel and as such, I haven’t, until recently, paid it much mind. However, when this show chose to wax moral, I perked up my ears because when a Fox Network program discusses morals, this is bound to be something I want to tune into. (Words fail to express the sarcasm of the previous sentence.) The Fox Network is the same network which brought you the tasteful tidbit “Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?” and is the official station of George W. Bush and his war to eradicate weapons of mass destruction. (In a strange twist of fate, the largest [and only] weapon of mass destruction after the year 2000 in Iraq turned out to be George W. Bush himself.) This is the network that sought to sanction contestant Antonella Barba on American Idol after it was revealed she had some scandalous photographs found on the internet. Barba was voted off the show, but it was her voice that was cited as the final cause. Nonetheless, American Idol has previously removed a contestant “Frenchie” after pictures surfaced of her on an adult pay site.

A Google search of either girl will reveal an onslaught of the related pictures as well as 50 pop up adds suggesting you need a larger penis, methods for fixing the problem and several contests you’ve won which should provide funds for any such programs. After closing the fog of pop ups, the pictures that emerged were at best Maxim or FHM worthy. To those not versed in the realm, Maxim and FHM are to Playboy and Penthouse as light-filtered-cigarettes are to cigars. My initial reaction to the pictures was flaccid causing me to momentarily rethink closing all the previous pop ups. After that moment I realized that I was unimpressed because it was clear to me that these pictures had absolutely nothing to do with the talent of the contestants. For the record, Frenchie has moved on to a promising career on Broadway. Instead, these pictures had everything to do with our confused morals.

Some will immediately protest: “the show is called American IDOL” — emphasis on ‘idol’ — and hence part of the criteria must be if such people are worthy of being idols. As soon as we open this can of worms, it’s necessary for American Idol to somehow consider the morals of the contestants. Morals and ethics are complicated and I’m certain that the Fox Network lacks the acumen to address the issue. In fact, I find it very hard to determine if it was revealed that Barba mutilated puppies would it have received more or less press and attention? I hear the conservative drone say: “the children, the poor children, whatever will we do if they see those pictures?!” To such parents, I point out that what would happen to children if children watch the evening news? I will attend that point momentarily.

Only in such a state of moral asymmetry could we even begin to ask these sorts of questions. Let’s look at the issue. Pornography: bad, good, neither, both? Dr Phil’s ‘Occam’s Razor’ style argument on the topic goes like this: If you wouldn’t want your daughter involved in porn, then why would you watch someone elses’ daughter? Dr Phil, President Bush and the Fox Network are experts at providing short answers to complicated questions that sound reasonable and under scrutiny turn out to be faulty. At the risk of being guilty of the same thing I accuse Dr. Phil, the short answer to Dr. Phil is: I don’t want my daughter to be a sanitation maintenance engineer (the politically correct term for garbage man/woman) but that doesn’t stop me from taking my trash to the curb. However, let’s take a deeper look at the issue, and to do so, we’ll restrict the general porn issue to examining going topless at a beach. If anyone reading the rest of this article derives that I carte blanche advocate pornography, I invite them to reread the previous sentence.

(An unremembered comedian [likely Bill Maher or Robin Williams] once quipped that to, the overly simplified criminal justice mantra, “three strikes and you’re out” is the answer to gays in the military “four balls and you walk”?)

I’d like to ask Dr. Phil if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach. I suspect strongly that he’d say no. Then I’d like to ask him if he’d let his daughter go topless on a beach in Brazil where the practice is commonplace (certainly more common place) and considered about as common as walking around in a bikini. I suspect he’d still say no, but the question would have got him thinking (and hopefully you as well). People will hem and haw over this point but that’s only because we’re dealing with the cusp of what’s currently considered ‘ok’. Then I’d ask him if he’d let his daughter wear one piece swim suit (not a bikini). I suspect he’d say yes. Then I’d finally ask him, if he lived in the 1800’s (when woman swam in the equivalent of a ‘Burka’) would he also let her wear a one piece swim suit? I’d like very much to hear his answer. Whether he says yes or no, he’d be forced to admit that his ‘morals’ have more to do with the time (society) he lives in than what is actually ‘right or wrong’. Star Wars got it right when George Bush gawks: “You’re either with us or against us” and Obe Wan Kenobi replies: “only the Sith believe in absolutes.” It’s my personal belief that the ‘Sith’ is a code for George Bush and the conservative lot (Sith = Simple Ignorant THeists).

Thus, questions of moral propriety are very hard questions to answer, and I sure as hell don’t want the Fox Network to even make the attempt. The question of where this moral confusion arose in the first place begs answering. I can only offer an answer in a form of an allegory of two presidents. First we have a story of an otherwise good president who had sex in the oval office; He was impeached. Next we have a story of a president who didn’t have sex in the oval office and sent a nation to war to get rid of weapons of mass destruction which didn’t exist. This president who sent thousands to their deaths for no reason at all was, was… was… Oh, nothing happened to him.

The take home message of all this confusion is that morals are hard. You’re going to have to turn off the TV and think about them if you want to have a chance of getting them right. In turn, the only take home message one can glean about the state of American morals from all this is that Americans are fine with boobs only so long as one doesn’t post pictures of them on the internet and instead elects them to office.

advocate · AID · ale · America · american idol · antonella barba · Bill Maher · bob dylan · Brazil · bush · cent · ethics · Fox Network · George · george bush · George W. Bush · Google · http · Internet · Iraq · king · Louis Armstrong · MIT · morals · Neil Young · otherwise good president · Paula Abdul · Phil's 'Occam · President · RAM · Randy Jackson · Red · Robert Plant · Robin Williams · sanitation maintenance engineer · sex · Simon Cowell · star wars · station of George W. Bush · unremembered comedian

A Crypto Star of David in Yata, Palestinian Territories

A report by Nissim Mossek about Palestinians of Jewish origin.

Video:  http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-279707#

Time Index / Note

1:10 – Many Palestinians are crypto-Jews from the era of Bar Kochba
1:50 – As many as 85% of Palestinians are of Jewish origin
3:55 – The Sawarka Tribe (located deep in the Palestinian Territories), admits Jewish origins, didn’t light fires on Sabbath, had mikvehs (ritual immersion)
5:00 Hebrew University genetic study reveals Jews and Palestinians descended commonly from Babylonian Kurds
6:10, Some Palestinians have the ‘Cohen gene’
7:00 The Sawarka boys are circumcised after the 7th day which is unlike the Moslem tradition.
7:25 The Sawarka brother of a deceased man is obligated to offer himself as a groom to the widow, according to biblical tradition.  (Tradition of Yibbum, Deut 25:5)
7:55 As recently as 200 years ago the village of Sachnin had an active synagogue
9:20 The Makhamra clan are open about their Jewish origins.  Makhamra means:  Wine Makers, Heaven have mercy Upon us  (wine is stricly forbidden in Islam).
10:20 90% of the Village of Yata is originally Jewish
10:35 Mezuza and Tefillin hidden in houses of Yata.
11:35 Bar Kochba, according to an Israeli settler was originally named: Ben Kuziba

ale · Babylonian Kurds · Bar Kochba · Ben Kuziba · cent · Hebrew University · http · Israel · Jews · Makhamra · MIT · Nissim Mossek · Sachnin · Sawarka · video · Yata · Yibbum

The Past:

In the web 1.0 world, we were happy just to be able to surf the web and have access to thousands of new and wonderful services.  However, shortly thereafter, our hard drives became bloated with installed components, some of which were seldom used, slowing our operating systems to a crawl.  Around the same time, surfing the web became a game of ‘memory’ where we had to guess which user names and passwords we had created to get at all these great services.  If we had the misfortune of guessing incorrectly more than 3 times, we often ran into a situation where accounts became locked, requiring emails to virtually nonexistent customer service departments.  In web 1.0 our surfing was limited by our ability to remember passwords and our OS’s ability to support multiple plug ins and installed software components.

Web 2.0 — The Present:

With the advent of Web 2.0 we’re witnessing a new movement, that of the no cost,  no install, and no log in software.  Tired of installing software and creating user accounts, sites have popped up which offer much of the functionality we’re used to with less of the hassle.

Photo Sharing:

Yes Flickr is great.  But what if you want to simply post a fast picture without having to log in and create a sign on?  I just want to quickly share a picture.  I’ve tried these two sites:

Share4Pic -> http://share4pic.com/en/
Image Ox -> http://www.imageox.com/

For example, using Share4Pic to share the image associated with this post:  I need only simply visit the site and perform a quick upload.  After that I’m immediately given a url (link) which I can use in a chat or in an email or what have you.

http://share4pic.com/images/5/8/1/5811518.jpg

Screenshot Sharing

You can adapt this idea to allow for screen shot sharing.  Suppose you are helping someone having some problems using a program.  You’d like to send them a picture of the screen in front of you with some comments.  No problem, just press ALT+PRINT SCREEN.  Now, on Windows, under accessories, open “Paint”.  Using the “Edit” menu click on “Paste” and your screen shot will now appear.  Use the text tool to enter comments as necessary.  Save the file as type “JPG” (jpeg) and save it with a name you’ll remember in a location you’ll remember.  Now, just upload this file to a photo sharing site like share4pic or imageox and send the link to your suffering friend.  He or she will now be able to view your screenshot and benefit from the advice you’ve added.  An example is here:

http://share4pic.com/en/6541394/How_to_share_images/

Screenshot Kwouting (Quoting)

Another great util for sharing screenshots or part of a screen is www.kwout.com .  Have you ever just wanted to show someone where to click or what to look for on a web page?  The best way to do so is to simply show them a picture of what you’re talking about.  They’ve provided a handy widget such that web designers can embed their functionality into their own site.  If you click on this button:

you can ‘kwout’ an excerpt from this blog entry!  As an example from www.simple2chat.com, if I wanted to show someone how to start a new conversation, I could tell them to click on the new conversation button in the tool bar  .  As they say “a picture is worth a thousand words”.  Hopefully this utility will save you several thousand words.  Again, no login, and no install required.  (There is also a handy Firefox plugin which isn’t necessary but is very helpful to have.)

Online Office:

Microsoft Office is great.  It’s been great since 1995 after which I can’t understand the justification for any upgrades.  The problem with Microsoft Office is 1) its cost and 2) it takes up space and resources on your machine.  Web 2.0 has seen the introduction of online office suites.  Three come to mind right of the top of my head:
Think Free: http://member.thinkfree.com/
Zoho: http://www.zoho.com/
Google Docs:  http://docs.google.com

Now, admittedly all these sites require a log in, but they don’t require any installation.  The log in is required to keep track of your documents.  These online suites are, in my opinion, better than Microsoft office as they allow for collaboration across many platforms and sites.  You can build a slide show with your colleagues across the world while working on the final numbers on a spreadsheet type application.

There is another suite here worth mentioning and that’s Open Office.  It doesn’t require a log in, but does require an install.  Just the same, it’s a full featured office suite that is free of charge and is very robust in the features offered.

Music:

The recording industry and the internet community have been playing a game of cat and mouse over the past decade.  There are so many file sharing programs that have been made available and then prosectued that I’ve almost lost track.  To name a few, Kazaa, Bear Share, EMule, Limewire, and all the torrent sites no less.  All are/were great ways to get plenty of mp3’s illegally.  Then came along ITunes and several other pay sites which had a terrific library which you could access by proprietary installed software.

What if you could listen to all the music you wanted without the legal entanglements?  Sounds too good to be true?  Well, not in the world of Web 2.0.  I came across this gem in my internet travels:
http://songza.com/

It’s 100% legal (all artists are payed) and it’s provided to you with no log in and at no cost.  I was amazed with the coverage their library offered.  I tested the depth of coverage with a few rare or rarer favorites of mine from various eras such as:

Saint Saens “Danse Macabre”: http://songza.com/z/gg09tj
T-Bone Walker  “Stormy Monday” : http://songza.com/z/yg36z3
Herbert Gorecki  “Symphony No 3″: http://songza.com/z/af287q
Billie Holiday  ”I Wished On The Moon”: http://songza.com/z/qh8i8y
Pink Floyd “Corporal Clegg”: http://songza.com/z/umf8nj
John Foxx “Underpass”: http://songza.com/z/yo3705
Lenny Kravitz “The Resurrection”: http://songza.com/z/yyv2w6

Music Sharing

If you are an artist yourself and wish to share your music there is a site I recommend which does require a login, but no installation:  www.odeo.com On it, you can create channels of your own works and share them with your friends and colleagues.  Here is a channel created by yours truly:
http://odeo.com/channel/120616/view

Chat:

Internet chat is at once the greatest productivity booster and impedement of the modern era.  I have four different chat clients running on my machine (msn,yahoo,googletalk, and skype).  There are programs such as Trillian which seek to consolidate these services under one umbrella.  First off, it requires an installation and second, I find it doesn’t do a great job at completeness (eg file sharing and video often disabled).

Web 2.0 has a few partial solutions to the chat client overpopulation problem.  The first is www.meebo.com.  This is a site, which like Trillian, puts all your chat accounts under one umbrella.  It has a Firefox plugin which will allow you to use it as though it has been installed on your computer.  It won’t support video or several other advanced features of any given chat program, but at least you don’t need to install anything.

If you’d simply like to have a chat conversation with a few people without having to have them all on the same chat protocol, you can use www.simple2chat.com which is provided by yours truly.  This isn’t intended to be a replacement for chat, but is instead a no login, no install, simple, and fast chat site to allow people to converse or conference quickly and easily.

File Sharing / File BackUp:

With web 2.0, we won’t be installing as much software as we used to.  However, what do we do with all the files we have?  A good example that comes to mind is my mp3 collection.  When I’m at work, how do I have access to my mp3 collection?  I could take a USB memory key, but wouldn’t it be great if there was a web accessible service which could store reams of data?  Well there is.  www.adrive.com offers 50GB (!!) of storage.  You can share the files you’ve stored and upload and download files from any computer with internet access.  You have to provide a login, but that’s no big deal given the advantages.

If you’d like a quick file sharing utility, try www.drop.io .  This utility allows you to share files plus a whole host of other great features.

Summary:

Web 2.0 is a brave new world wide web.  There is no longer the need to install software for hours on end.  Your data, songs, pictures, work documents, and chat clients can now follow you wherever you go.

Websites Mentioned:

Photo Sharing
http://share4pic.com/en/

http://www.imageox.com/

Screenshot Quoting
www.kwout.com
Online Office
http://member.thinkfree.com/
http://www.zoho.com/
http://docs.google.com
Free Downloadable Office Suite
Open Office
Music (Listening)
http://songza.com/
Music (Sharing)
www.odeo.com
Chat – Download – All In One
Trillian
Chat – Online – No Install – All In One
www.meebo.com
Chat Online Instant Chat / Conference – No Install, No Login
www.simple2chat.com
File Sharing
www.adrive.com
www.drop.io

Digg This Story!

adrive · artist · blog · cent · chat · conference · designer · drop.io · file sharing · firefox · flickr · Google · google docs · head · http · ILS · imageox · instant chat · Internet · internet chat · itunes · king · kwout.com · location · meebo · microsoft office · MIT · mp3 · Music · music sharing · odeo · online backup · online chat · online office · open office · operating system · overpopulation · photo sharing · RAM · Red · resources · screenshot · screenshot sharing · share4pic · simple2chat · songza · think free · utility · video · web · web 2.0 · widget · world wide web · www.simple2chat.com · zoho · zoho office

I recently auditioned for a local community opera.  I did so amidst the worst bought of chronic sinusitis I’ve ever experienced.  Needless to say I didn’t win the part.

I started a regime of recording myself as I treat the condition with herbal remedies because nothing my mainstream doctors have given me seems to work.

Here I take a stab at E Lucevan le Stelle.  By ’stab’ I likely mean a mortal blow to the beloved piece.  I hope my sinuses improve before I desecrate all music.

E Lucevan le Stelle (Tosca, Puccini) – Martin C. Winer

cent · chronic sinusitis I · e lucevan le stelle · herbal remedies · http · Martin C. Winer · Music · php · puccini · sinusitis · tosca

Ahmadinejad wearing his trademark white jacket and pointing to the Farsi phrase Ma Mitavanim (We Can) on a blackboard.

Canadian Link:  http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart/full-episodes/#clip185688

US Link: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=231561&title=reza-aslan

Reza Aslan was interviewed on the Daily Show on June 24, 2009 lauding the response of Barack Obama during the recent and ongoing revolution in Iran.  Aslan notes strong parallels to ‘79 noting that this revolution is likewise a battle for the future of Iran.  Starting at time index 4:48, Aslan applauds Obama’s response:  “Thank you God for President Barack Obama” says Aslan.

“Obama played this perfectly.  During his campaign Iran never left his mouth.  This worked to the disadvantage of Ahmadinejad’s because he couldn’t use his ‘America is going to attack any minute now’ rhetoric.”

Aslan notes that Ahmadinejad’s campaign slogan was “Ma Mitavanim” which is Persian for “Yes we can”.

Responding to opposition calls to make stronger statements or take stronger actions in regards to Iran Aslan warns:

“The US has a long sordid history of meddling in Iranian affairs. … If you want to pu and end to this movement, this revolution tomorrow, let’s listen to Bill Bennett, let’s listen to John McCain.”

Aslan recommends that the US continue its current approach.  “The best thing that we can do is shut up.”  He goes on to say that “Obama has changed the equation in that region.  He is taking the long view on issues, looking ahead 10 years from now.”

Aslan is certain that Iran will emerge a different country from what it is now, but he is concerned as to what form of change will come.  “Iran is on a precipice between North Korea and China; with isolation and militarization on one hand and a preservation of the oligarchies while opening to commerce and contact on the other.”

When asked what US citizens can do to help the revolution, he suggests encouraging and pressuring the EU and UN to act who do have influence in the region.  As for the US, he contends “you have to have a relationship with someone in order to punish them more.  … We have no influence there.  … We can’t punish them any more.  What are we going to do sanction them more?”

—

Reza Aslan’s most recent book is “How to Win a Cosmic War”:
http://www.rezaaslan.com/cosmicwar.html

Ahmadinejad · aig · America · Barack Obama · Bill Bennett · blog · cent · China · Commission of European Communities · equation · European Union · evolution · flu · God · head · html · http · Iran · Iranian Revolution · Islamic Republic of Iran · John McCain · king · MIT · North Korea · obama · President · Reza Aslan · The Daily Show · United Nations · United States · video

I’ve long held a theory about homosexuality that a recent article lends credence to. I’ve examined homosexuality through a political-societal lens in this posting:

http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/the-war-of-the-words-are-heterosexual-monogamists-the-patent-holders-on-marriage/

In this posting, I’d like to examine homosexuality through the lens of evolutionary biology. You see, those who condemn homosexuality do so by thumping on two texts, the bible and National Geographic. Bible thumpers thump and then leaf to Leviticus 18:22 which reads: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind; it is abomination.” I invite such individuals to glance at Numbers 15:32-36 which states that those who profane the sabbath ought to be publicly stoned. However, at least in the case of bible thumpers I can concede that the text does condemn homosexuality.

In the case of those who open up their National Geographic and point to pictures of rutting and mating animals and say, “it’s not nature’s way”, they’ve just got it wrong. It is Nature’s way; they just lack an understanding of nature and specifically evolution. Homosexuality has existed in nature for eons, but the question, from an evolutionary standpoint is: “How?” Standard evolution deals with selective pressures which make certain individuals more successful than others in reproduction. As a result the genes that contributed to this success are passed on preferentially over less ‘fit’ genes.

Homosexuality poses a conundrum then to anyone who lacks another piece in the evolution puzzle: Kin Selection. It is possible to pass your genes on to the next generation without directly reproducing. You can accomplish this by helping your kin as much as possible. By helping your kin, who carry part of your genetic code, you can preferentially increase the survivability and reproductive success of your kin. This mechanism was proposed by W. D. Hamilton in the 1960’s when explaining the evolution of altruism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._D._Hamilton#Hamilton.27s_rule

Since I am Canadian, I learned about the evolution of altruism using the example of our good old Canadian Beaver. When a beaver detects danger, such as a wolf, it slaps its tail loudly against the water to warn its peers of the impending danger. This behaviour attracts attention to itself, making it a target for predation. Thus, how did this behaviour evolve, considering that it lowers the reproductive success of the warning beaver? The answer is that the beaver’s peers are relatives. Thus even if the beaver becomes the wolf’s lunch, the beaver’s genes can live on via the reproductive success of its relatives.

Arriving back at our original topic of consideration, how then can homosexuality have been allowed to survive the process of natural selection? I’ve long suspected that the notion of kin selection might be at work here too. I’ve long thought that if perhaps homosexual individuals helped in child rearing and caring, then their genes may have been passed indirectly through the offspring of the kin they assisted. Recently I chanced upon a study which proposes exactly this explanation:

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/080208_gaygene

This study of a Samoan homosexuals suggests that homosexuals do indeed assist in child rearing. It’s important to note that similar studies have been conducted in the West but have failed to find such a correlation. It is proposed that the Samoan culture more closely replicates our ancient lifestyle and that the modern (western) biases and condemnation of homosexuality may be to blame for the failures of the western studies.

In conclusion, what is most striking, yet perhaps not blaringly obvious from this study is that opposition to homosexuality comes from those appealing to old sources such as the bible or appeals to nature’s longstanding order. However, this study shows that, at least in evolutionary time scales, the bias against homosexuality is a modern invention.

ale · bible · Case · cent · evolution · genetic code · Hamilton · homosexuality · http · kin selection · king · life · marriage · National Geographic · natural selection · nature · Red · Samoa · sex

http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2005/08/21/business/21real.graphic.html

This is a graph of historical housing prices relative to inflation since 1890.  The graph is indexed to inflation so you are seeing the bubble in house prices above and beyond inflation. 

The take home message to this graph is the following.  Take a look at the average home value over the past 100 odd years.  It seems to average somewhere around $112,000.  Now look at the peak which is somewhere around $180,000.  Dividing through we get a ‘bubble-factor’ = 180/112 = 1.6 .  What that means to you is that if you own a house currently valued at $500,000, if the bubble corrects you’ll actually own a $312,500 house (500/1.6 = 312.5).

Will the bubble correct?  Historically bubbles do one of two things:  1) they correct or 2) they flatten and wait for inflation to catch up with them.  What will this bubble do?  I can’t tell you and neither can any of the supposed experts. 

What caused this bubble?  The Federal Reserve lowered interest rates to as low as 1%.  This flooded the market with money which people invested in housing, since the internet bubble had burst. 

Who benefits from this bubble?  This bubble benefits 3 groups of people, bankers, the recently dead, and people with in laws.  Bankers make huge profits on the the inflated mortgages people must now take out to put a roof over their head.  Those who have recently died (since we’re at the peak of the bubble) benefit as their estate sells their property at the inflated price with record profit.  Hopefully they have children to benefit from the heavily taxed inheritance.  Regrettably, if they don’t have children to pass the benefit on to, then it’ll be hard to enjoy their windfall, being dead and all. 

If you’re alive you never benefit from this type of bubble.  People typically want to move up, that is move to a better home.  Thus you have to sell your current home and move to a better home.  Thus, you make a profit on the sale, but take a hit on the inflated purchase.  Basically it’s like borrowing from Peter to pay Paul, and it all ends up even in the wash. 

If you have in laws and can sell at the inflated price and move in with your in laws (avoiding having to buy an inflated property) you may benefit from the bubble by waiting for it to bottom out, if indeed it does.  Living with your in laws may allow you to sell high and buy low, but that assumes the bubble corrects and moreover, living with your parents you may wish you were recently dead.

Who suffers from this bubble?  The most notable group of people to suffer are the first time home buyers.  Entering the market at the peak you’ll be paying 1.6 times what you should hadn’t the bubble occured.  Ultimately all property owners suffer because the bubble leads them to think that they have more money than they actually do.

ale · bank · banker · bubble · cent · fed · federal reserve · Federal Reserve System · head · html · http · inflation · interest rate · Internet · internet bubble · mortgage · real estate · Red · Robert J Shiller · the fed · US Federal Reserve · USD

Growing up I often heard people remark that the “poor get poorer as the rich get richer.”  I was led to believe that this was an unfortunate side effect of a free market economy.  This flaw aside, the free market economy was said to be a much better approach than anything else that had come along.  I spent my time focused on ways of making laissez faire capitalism more compassionate.  We exist in a welfare state and I, living in Canada, live in a society which offers socialized medicine.  Both of these measures are great first steps in assuring the compassion of capitalism however, I was always frustrated knowing that the only true compassion of capitalism would come in allowing everyone to earn wealth.

As I continued to study the problem, imagine my shock and dismay when I learned that we do not live in a free market system.  We live in a central bank monetary system (ie, the Federal Reserve) which has an invisible, moreover, malevolent hand in conducting the nation’s monetary policy.  This may sound like a conspiracy theory however if it was, it’s an awfully dull one given that the chairman of the Federal Reserve openly admits this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x56MpWZh88s
http://broadband.thecomedynetwork.ca/comedy/?vid=19058

Through the Federal Reserve’s mucking with the money supply and the resulting inflation, those with savings saw their savings erode silently falling into the hands of the nations richest few.  In order to escape inflation, you must own debt free assets which index to inflation.  Only the richest few of us can accomplish this and thus evade the silent erosion of our savings into the hands of bankers and the financial elite.  Here are a few graphs showing the effects:

source : http://lanekenworthy.net/2008/03/09/the-best-inequality-graph/

source : http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Central banking (The Fed) is an age old scheme of mob rule over the money supply. 

“Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.”
– Mayer Amschel Rothschild

It has origins dating back to the temple days when Jesus drove out the money changers.  (The word ‘bank’ comes from the Latin ‘bench’ from which the temple money changers made their predatory exchanges.)  The only way to restore justice and equity is to restore the issuing power over money back to the people.  For more info, please see:

http://inflationtax.blogspot.com/

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Film Review of “Babel” — Spoiler Warning (however this movie was written spoiled)

– An alternative view

Biblically, Genesis Chap 11 tells of the story of humans who sought to build the tower of Babel such that they could reach God. God then responds by confounding their speech and understanding of one another and spreading them all over the world. This is the Genesis account for the origin of religions and races.

If the movie “Babel” has anything to do with its biblical namesake, in this case, God makes all the people of the earth extremely stupid. First we start with a couple in marital trouble as a result of the recent death of one of their newborn, likely from SIDS. This brainy couple decides to take a trip to Morroco (without the remaining kids) to solve their problems: stupid.

Compounding this stupidity, a Morrocan father procures a rifle to help rid his flocks of jackals. He gives the rifle to his stupid young children who decide to test the efficacy of the weapon on passing tourist busses. On this bus is? Yup you guessed it, the stupid couple with marital troubles. Who gets shot? You guessed it, the wife from this couple. Now some would look upon this as an artistic study of cause and effect. I look on it more simply: Stupid people shooting at stupid people is simply natural selection at its finest.

But wait, one would think this expose of stupidity would suffice for a two hour and twenty minute film, but there are more stupid entaglements. The rifle was originally given to a local Morrocan by a Japanese hunter. This Japanese man recently had his wife commit suicide and he stupidly leaves his younger (deaf and mute) daughter alone for great spells of time such that she needs to compensate by seeking sex from any and every available male. In the films most unbelievable stroke, she fails on every attempt. I have the fortune of living in a male body and as such am qualified to inform you that this would never occur.

But wait again, there’s still another stupid entaglement. The housekeeper of the stupid maritally challenged couple has a wedding to attend in Mexico. She was originally promised the day off, but upon hearing of the tragic string of events which happened to her stupid employers, she’s informed that she won’t be able to get that day off. What follows is a screenplay that could be accomplished by going to Taco Bell and using 8.5″ x 11″ stock as toilet paper to clean up.

She takes the kids, American citizens, into Mexico with her. The kids experience the cultural diversity of a Mexican wedding, at first seeming to enjoy it. Things go awry when stupid people allow a drunk driver to drive the kids and Nanny back to San Diego. The rest is just too hard to believe; first that it could actually happen and next that the screen writer wrote it. The driver is hassled at the border. He panics and runs the border with the police hot on his tail. He abandons the children and the Nanny in the desert with promises to return. (He was likely fleeing the scene of a crime in screen writing.) The Nanny and children are left to fend for themselves in the desert when he never returns. Eventually they are picked up by the border patrol and the children are returned unharmed, and the Nanny is deported. I am a critic of US Immigration Policy, however, not in this case.

In the end Babel is an example of Oscar seeking formulaic writing. The formula is simple: create an appearance of meaning, when, in fact, there is none. In so doing, you automatically embarass any critics of the film by allowing the argument that they are simply dullards who can’t grasp the great meaning of the film. The truth is far more simple in this case: Stupid people understand stupid people very well and are able to write a painful two hour and twenty minute discertation on the interactions of stupidity.

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Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (Canadian Link): http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/#clip174780

Walter Kirn on The Colbert Report (USA Link):  http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/228190/may-19-2009/walter-kirn

Review of:
“Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever”
By: Walter Kirn (Doubleday)
Reviewed By: Martin C. Winer
June 28, 2009

When I picked up “Lost in the Meritocracy:  The Undereducation of an Overachiever” by Walter Kirn (Doubleday), I expected a semi-dry expose on the problems facing the American Education system with an emphasis on the Ivy League schools.  The only semi-dry thing in the book was the champagne Kirn poured over two fawning exchange students during a graduation night orgy on his way to Princeton.  Told with prose and wit more common to novels, Kirn details his experiences as he rises out of the rural Minnesota winning one of 20 transfer student spots at Ivy League Princeton.

By Kirn’s account it is a wonder that there is any ivy left due to the propensity of the students to smoke any mildly herbaceous looking thing.

“There is no drug scene like an Ivy League drug scene.  Kids can’t just get high; they have to seek epiphanies.  They have to ground their mischief in manifestos.  The most popular one around … held that drugs, … especially plant based psychedelic drugs helped to break down the rigid inner partitions that restricted one’s full humanity.” (p. 124)

Recreational drug use was pervasive at Princeton as were many other illicit activities, with education taking a back seat.  I was so engaged with the stories that I was half way through when I reexamined the title and asked “what is a meritocracy anyways?”

Meritocracy was introduced as a more equitable replacement for aristocracy. Insofar as education, Harvard’s James Conant championed the cause of educational reform towards meritocracy as a realization of Thomas Jefferson’s dream of a “natural aristocracy among men, founded on virtue and talents.” (Jefferson used the term ‘natural aristocracy’ instead of ‘meritocracy’ because it wasn’t coined a term until the 1958 book “Rise of the Meritocracy” by Michael Young.  Incidentally it was intended pejoratively.) As with many high minded theories, the implementation often renders an imperfect reflection of the ideal.

Conant set the controversial School Aptitude Test (SAT) as gatekeeper for the bastions of higher learning guarding all the rewards of power that lay beyond.  When Walter Kirn took the SAT, he discovered he “had a natural talent for multiple-choice tests [which] landed [him] without the vaguest survival instructions [at Princeton]”. (p. 6)  Throughout the course of the book which details his experiences at Princeton Kirn suggests that his education consisted of learning how to succeed in the education system;  this is a far cry from becoming educated.

The distinction is eloquently revealed when Kirn is asked to discuss the ‘critical assumptions’ he’s made in reading the Norton anthologies;  unfortunately, Kirn had done little reading at all:

“With virtually no stored literary material about which to harbor critical assumptions, I relied on my gift for mimicking authority figures and playing back to them their own ideas as though they were conclusions I’d reached myself. I’d honed these skills on the speech team back in high school, and l didn’t regard them as sins against the [Princeton Student] Honor Code. Indeed, they embodied an honor code: my own “Be honored” it stated. “Or be damned.” To me, imitation and education were different words for the same thing, anyway.  What was learning but a form of borrowing? And what was intelligence but borrowing slyly?” (p.119)

Throughout the course of the book Kirn refers to himself as a fraud – sometimes proudly but more often with remorse.  But is Kirn a fraud or instead a sufferer of “Fraud Syndrome”?  Fraud Syndrome (also Impostor Syndrome) is not an official psychiatric diagnosis, but it is a topic well known and documented by psychiatrists and psychologists.  It is an intellectual condition where the intellect feels disconnected from any accomplishments or abilities.  If the intellect were a tree, then the tree would lack any knowledge of its roots and thus mistakenly think that its ability to grow upright was the result of undeserved serendipity.

Kirn’s notion that he somehow managed to beguile and finesse the system into accepting him to its highest ranks is significantly, and ironically, weakened by the quality of the writing he uses in making said point.  What follows is an example of Kirn’s average writing:

“Certain questions which grown-ups deem unanswerable begin as answers which children find unquestionable.  For example: what is Death?  To me at eight years old, death was the signal for a person’s loved ones to cry and look stricken for a while and then begin dividing up his stuff.” (p. 30)

Witty and clever turns of phrases such as these are found on every other page.  While this made for a delightful read, it served to undermine one of his main tenets.  It seems far more likely that Kirn didn’t finesse the system, but that the system managed recognized his talent despite his own inability to do so – marshalling him exactly where he ought to be: in the commensurate Princeton English Program.

If Fraud Syndrome ever does make it one day to be an official diagnosis, then Kirn should appear on the Public Service Announcement poster.  The text is rife with examples of Kirn’s detachment from his talent and feelings of being a fraud:

“My genuine tears [over the news of John Lennon’s death] flowed along with my false tears, as they did the distinction between them blurred.  I wasn’t ashamed of this.  My fraudulence, I was coming to understand, was in a way the truest thing about me.” (p. 77)

“The need to finesse my ignorance through such trickery [(using catchphrases)] — honorable trickery to my mind, but not to other minds, perhaps — left me feeling hollow and vaguely haunted.  Seeking security in numbers, I sought out the company of other frauds.” (p. 121)

“I grew to suspect that certain professors were on to us, and I wondered if they too, were fakes.” (p. 122)

“[My poems] were concerned with grander matters such as the creeping loss of “personhood” in an era of technological change. How I’d hit on this theme I wasn’t sure, but the more time I spent on it the more convinced l grew that I’d borrowed it.” (p.140)

“I confessed that my poems were all a sham and that [my] Bittman [character] was a hybrid version of Eliot’s Prufrock and Berryman’s Henry two famously beleaguered characters from the North anthologies.” (p.144)

“I felt in [my friend’s] company, as in no one else’s, that my bullshitting was a defensible activity, a circular approach to enlightenment.” (p. 168)

One of Kirn’s Princeton encounters offers a possible cause for Fraud Syndrome.  Kirn has a conversation with Julian — undoubtedly Dr. Julian Jaynes best known for his book “The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind” – in a bar following the production of one of Kirn’s plays.  Julian explained that the human mind was actually two distinct entities, that in ancient times were:

“… virtual strangers to each other.  When a thought arose in one of them, the other one, acting as a receiver, processed the thought as a voice, an actual voice.  …  But who was this being?  …  Man had answered these questions in many ways.  He’d conceived of gods and spirits, angels and demons, trolls and fairies.  Muses.” (pps. 93-94)

When Julian asked Kirn: “did you ever feel, during the composition of your script, that someone else, not you, was in control?” Kirn replied: “Honestly, I feel that way a lot.  Down deep, in a quiet way, I feel it constantly.  And sometimes it shakes me up a little.” (p. 94)  Perhaps this is why Kirn was unable to identify with his obvious talent; it felt external to him.  While Kirn makes this point incidentally in his book, it is nonetheless a very important one.  While Kirn fails to connect with his talent due to this separation of the mind, many more do something far worse:  Many fail to express their talents at all – failing to listen to that other ‘voice’.

While Kirn fails to impress upon me that his placement at Princeton was either coincidental or accidental, he does make some well taken points about the education he received once there.  It seems that when reading in the English program, pretension superseded comprehension.

“We … concluded, before we’d read even a hundredth of it, that Western canon was “illegitimate,” a veiled expression of powerful group interests that it was our duty to subvert.  In our rush to adopt the latest attitudes and please the younger and hipper of our instructors, … we skipped straight from ignorance to revisionism, deconstructing a body of literary knowledge that we’d never constructed in the first place.” (p.121)

“To thinkers of this school, great literature was an incoherent con, and I — a born con man who knew little about great literature had every reason to agree with them. In the land of nonreadability the nonreader was king it seemed.   Long live the king.”  (p.122)

Kirn found that many of the supposed ‘greats’ they were asked to read were completely incomprehensible by students and professors alike:

“Here is a sentence (or what I took to be one because it ended with a period) from the contribution by the Frenchman Jacques Derrida, the volume’s most prestigious name. “He speaks his mother tongue as the language of the other and deprives himself of all reappropriation, all specularization in it.” On the same page I encountered windpipe-blocking “heteronomous’ and “invagination.” When I turned the page I came across – tucked in a footnote –“unreadability.”

That word I understood of course.” (p.120)

For Kirn, university was a process in learning to jockey jargon words and phrases effectively.  Phrases like ‘semiotically unstable’ (referring to T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land”) and words such as ‘hermeneutical’, ‘gestural’, ‘recursive’, ‘incommensurable’ were all synonyms for ‘hard’.  Kirn was extremely confused by the works he read but he realized that confusion was not something to be escaped by understanding, but instead something which could be exploited by mirroring it back at its source.

“I was a confused young opportunist trying to turn his confusion to his advantage by sucking up to scholars of confusion.  The literary works they prized — the ones best suited to their project of refining and hallowing confusion — were, quite naturally, knotty and oblique.  The poems of Wallace Stevens, for example.  My classmates and I found them maddeningly elusive, like collections of backward answers to hidden riddles, but luckily we could say “recursive” by then.  We could say “incommensurable”.”  (p.122)

Kirn was adrift in a sea of confusion but it seemed that he was managing to navigate it by drinking the sea water and rolling with the currents.  It wasn’t long before Kirn’s thirst for meaning caught up with him, just as he had become completely intellectually dehydrated, basking in the scorching sun of the top percentile.  Kirn suffered a collapse, unable to continue the charade:

“For a few weeks I was still able to write, but it was a punishing, grind, self-conscious labor. I began most of my sentences with “the.”  Then I went looking for a noun. “The book” was often the result. Next, I seemed to remember, should come a verb. “Is” is a verb. It because my favorite verb. I liked it for its open-endedness — the way it allowed for a wide range of next moves. “The book is always . . .”  “The book is thought to . . .”  “The book is green and . . .” Impermissible. Yes, a book might be a certain color, but starting an essay with the fact wasn’t what college was all about. What was it all about? It was about making statements that weren’t obvious for people who made such statements professionally. “The book is a gestural construct possessed of telos.”

There I could rest.  I’d done it.  An hour’s work.” (p.178)

Eventually Kirn recovered after undertaking a course of self guided education which he found more fulfilling.  He continued his academic career at Oxford as a recipient of the “Keasbey Prize”.  Kirn draws two broader conclusions from his experience.

The first is a ‘roll with the punches and everything will turn out alright’ sort of message.  “… I discovered the truth — if words like “truth” mean anything.  And even if they don’t perhaps.  Pause in your knowing to be known.  Quit pushing — let yourself be pulled.  Stop searching, frantic child, and be found.”  (p. 205)  This advice may bear meaning for someone like Kirn with an innate and wonderful talent.  Its relevance to the rest of us who must work at it is somewhat questionable.

The second conclusion comes out more strongly in the interviews surrounding the book, but it is mentioned briefly.    In an interview (The Colbert Report: May 19, 2009.) Kirn claims that the current meritocracy does not reward depth, but instead rewards the “ability to define ‘incipient’. “Basically people who are very good at cross word puzzles end up running the country.”  “They are able to shine in every cocktail party they attend, but when it comes to running the economy, fighting the war on terror, … not very good.”  Kirn is referring to Donald Rumsfeld and to certain Lehman Brothers board members, who are Princeton Alumni.  Given Kirn’s experiences, it is easy to imagine jargon slinging economists brandishing terms like “Collaterized Debt Obligations” and “Credit Default Swaps” using them as talking points, rather than understanding their deeper implications.  Terms like these undoubtedly are mentioned in numerous A+ Ivy League Economics theses, confounding both the authors and the readers while leading to economic ruin.

This second summation is made in the book when Kirn discusses a run in, after graduating Princeton yet before going to Oxford, with an old friend who was self taught and well read.

“We had a great deal in common, Karl said.

But we didn’t, in fact, or much less than he assumed, and I didn’t know how to tell him this. To begin with, I couldn’t quote the transcendentalists as accurately and effortlessly as he could. I couldn’t quote anyone, reliably. I’d honed other skills: for flattering those in power without appearing to, for rating artistic reputations according to academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the backgrounds of my listeners, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some “classic” or masterpiece,”       for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if it looked like it was changing.

Flexibility, irony, self-consciousness, contrarianism. They’d gotten me through Princeton, they hadn’t quite kept me out of Oxford, and these, I was about to tell my friend, were the ways to get ahead now–not by memorizing old Ralph Waldo. I’d found out a lot since I’d aced the SATs, about the system, about myself and about the new class that the system had created, which I was now part of, for better or for worse. The class that runs things.” (p. 210)

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Randall Mills Holding A Hydrino Reactor

BlackLight’s physics-defying promise: Cheap power from water – Jul. 2, 2008.

“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.”

  — G. K. Chesterton

It would seem that the same is true regarding our worship of fossil fuels.  As fuel prices skyrocket there has been a run on alternative energy ideas.  I’ve covered several on this blog. 

http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/over-unity-cavetation-water-heater/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/02/19/thane-heins-perpetual-motion-free-energy-or-simply-releasing-a-brake/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/02/08/perpetual-motion-claim-if-its-a-hoax-its-a-good-one/
http://mwiner.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/solution-to-the-energy-crisis-aluminum-hydrogen-cycle/

This one, like that of Thane Heins breaks some laws of physics.  In the case of Heins, it was the Law of Conservation of Energy.  Randall Mills has broken some laws of Quantum Mechanics in suggesting that there is a lower energy state below the currently known ground state of hydrogen.  Mills terms such hydrogen atoms in this new lower energy state: ‘hydrinos’.

Electrons orbit the nucleus at well defined distances.  These distances (states) are finite, discrete or quantized as it were.  If an electron is excited by an influx of energy, it jumps to a higher state.  Conversely when an electron jumps to a lower orbital state, it releases some energy (a quanta of energy).  There is a theoretical limit to how low an electron can go in this scheme.  It’s called the ground state and it’s analogous to the lowest floor an elevator can go.

Hydrogen is the simplest, and most studied atom in modern science.  It consists of a proton and an electron.  It’s no wonder then that when Mills claims to have discovered a new ‘basement’ state below the known ground state that many physicists dismiss him out of hand.  If Mills is correct however, then this new ‘basement’ state could be used to cause hydrogen to release much more energy than simply burning hydrogen.

The crown jewel of science is the scientific method.  It avoids any political and otherwise human failings.  In short, can Mills produce this effect reproducibly and reliably.  The answer so far appears to be yes.  Mills’ company Blacklight has released prototype commercialized applications of his technology which are slated to be installed in power stations in 2009. 

During the interim, there is soft evidence which is also compelling.  Mills doesn’t want your money.  He has plenty of it in the form of $60 million in investments.  Mills also doesn’t want your help.  He has plenty in the form of an all star board of directors featuring many energy magnates.  All Mills needs to do now is to demonstrate his technology working on industrial scales.  He promises to deliver energy at 2 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas the current national average is 8.9 cents. 

This blog will continue to track events on this front.

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In 1979 Jimmy Carter delivered a televised speech bemoaning the increasing US dependence on foreign oil.  In it he outlines his Energy Policy for the coming decades.

“[Foreign Oil is] a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation.”

– Jimmy Carter  (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carter/filmmore/ps_crisis.html)

Today the US relies on 60% foreign oil (http://www.fueleconomy.gov/FEG/oildep.shtml) in strong defiance of president Carter’s prescient warning.

As far as the US dependence on foreign oil, nothing has changed since the Carter’s clarion call aside from the problem getting far worse.  However, president Carter didn’t live in a world threatened by Global Warming (at least it wasn’t commonly known).   President Carter also didn’t live in a world with two superpopulations, India and China weighing in at a billion people each who are poised to ramp up their consumption.

Clearly oil will no longer do as a source of energy.  Luckily science has provided an alternative: The Hydrogen – Aluminum Cycle.  To be clear, I’m not speaking of hydrogen power alone.  Hydrogen power alone is a red herring of alternative energies.  The catch is that hydrogen is hugely expensive to make and today largely comes from the demethylization of hydrocarbons; ie oil.  No, the Hydrogen – Aluminum cycle is something different entirely.

When we think of hydrogen, some horrible images from the past might emerge.

Here we see the Hindenburg which was filled with hydrogen bursting into flames.  Many see the risks of hydrogen in cars and decry ‘oh the humanity!’.  Well there are no such worries with the hydrogen – aluminum power cycle because the hydrogen is produced in micro amounts and only as needed.  Hydrogen need not be stored in a cryogenic canister with motorists barrelling down the highways with a bomb on board.  This in situ or just in time production solves the danger of using hydrogen in a car.

Next, we must solve the problem of where to find our hydrogen.  Clearly deriving it from oil simply won’t do.  The other current method for obtaining hydrogen is through a process called hydrolysis which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen.  Regrettably, this process is too inefficient to be used on a wide scale.

Enter into the picture aluminum.  Aluminum has a high affinity for oxygen.  Whenever you hold a piece of aluminum it has a skin of oxidation.  This skin, once formed, prevents any further oxidation which is why you never have to worry about rust in components built of aluminum.  Aluminum likewise reacts with water;  A jealous lover of oxygen, it bonds strongly with it, ousting the hydrogen.  While a jealous lover aluminum may be, it is quickly satiated and forms a skin failing to react any further.

Jerry Woodall, a professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Purdue, discovered in the 60’s that when aluminum, gallium and water were mixed, the aluminum oxidized fully, liberating massive amounts of hydrogen.  It would seem that the gallium acts as a mediator in the reaction and prevents the formation of the oxidation skin on aluminum.  The end results of this reaction are hydrogen gas, aluminum oxide (aka alumina) and gallium.  The gallium is not consumed, and thus can be recycled.  The alumina can be electrically converted back into aluminum and thus recycled.  Burning hydrogen produces only water.

The idea of using hydrogen to power a vehicle is certainly not a new one.  While Woodall was experimenting with gallium in the 60’s, GM was trying to prototype a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle: The Electrovan.  It is recognized as the first hydrogen fuel cell prototype.  The prototype was scrapped due to the high cost of the rare (precious) metals used in its fuel cells and the complexity of storing hydrogen.

The aluminum-gallium-hydrogen cycle may allow us to succeed where the Electrovan failed.  So now, let’s put the pieces together: How does this get you to work in the morning?  Your new, non-polluting car has two fuel tanks, one containing water, the other containing aluminum and gallium flakes.  As hydrogen is needed the water and the flakes are mixed.  The hydrogen is harvested and runs the engine.  Also the heat produces by the chemical reaction may be harvested for energy by a Stirling Engine which is a type of engine which can run off of temperature differentials.

When it comes time to fuel your vehicle, the new filling station attaches three hoses to your car.  One removes the slurry of used alumina to be recycled.  The other two replenish your supply of water and aluminum-gallium flakes.  When it comes time to pay for your aluminum flakes, will it be competitive with gasoline?

“Since standard industrial technology could be used to recycle our nearly pure alumina back to aluminum at 20 cents per pound, this technology would be competitive with gasoline,” Woodall said. “Using aluminum, it would cost $70 at wholesale prices to take a 350-mile trip with a mid-size car equipped with a standard internal combustion engine. That compares with $66 for gasoline at $3.30 per gallon. If we used a 50 percent efficient fuel cell, taking the same trip using aluminum would cost $28.”

–  (http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/x/2007b/070827WoodallNanotech.html)

Next, some may wonder where the aluminum will come from.

Enough aluminum exists in the United States to produce 100 trillion kilowatt hours of energy. That’s enough energy to meet all the U.S. electric needs for 35 years.  If impure gallium can be made for less than $10 a pound and used in an onboard system, there are enough known gallium reserves to run 1 billion cars.”

–  (http://www.purdue.edu/UNS/x/2007b/070827WoodallNanotech.html)

Recall that alumina (aluminum oxide, the waste product) can be recycled electrically back into aluminum.  So it’s not like oil where, once burnt, we can’t reclaim it.  We can electrically reclaim the waste alumina back into aluminum.

Ecologically this is a dream come true.  When thinking ecologically it’s important to think in terms of cycles.  Everythings output must be something’s input cycling back to the original source.  Here we have aluminum going to aluminum oxide (alumina) going back to aluminum.  The alumina to aluminum step can be powered by non polluting nuclear or renewable sources such as solar or wind etc.  The water turns to hydrogen which combines back with oxygen to produce water.  Gallium is never consumed and is recycled continuously.

So there you have it: president Carter’s dream some thirty years later, but not too late.  With the skyrocketing prices of oil the need for this change has never been more clear.  The only missing ingredient in this equation is the political motivation to fund and accelerate the conversion process.  This may prove to be the trickiest part of the equation to balance.

Further reading:

Please don’t take my word on this matter, feel free to do your own research:

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=aluminum+gallium&spell=1

http://youtube.com/results?search_query=aluminum+gallium&search_type=

There is also a similar approach using boron

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=boron+hydrogen+car&meta=

AID · ale · alternative energy · alternative fuel · aluminum · cent · chemical reaction · China · Coming · conversion · Economy · energy · energy crisis · engineering · equation · foreign oil · fuel cell · fuel cells · gallium · global warming · Google · html · http · hydrogen · hydrogen car · hydrogen gas · ie oil · India · industrial technology · inflation · Jerry Woodall · Jimmy Carter · king · levis · logic · mediator · oil · President · price oil · professor · professor of Computer Science · Purdue · quote · RAM · Red · solar · stirling engine · United States · USD · waste product · www.google.ca/search?hl=en& · www.google.ca/search?hl=en&q=boron+hydrogen+car&

… The Israeli accent is a great accent to fake at a bar.

(Israeli Accent)

“Hey Baby, I’m going to pre-emptively attack you by asking for your phone number before I even say hello…”

(normal accent)

It always works like a charm! How can any female argue with that?!

(beat)

However, there are a few disadvantages to the accent. The problem is that a few words are mispronounced leading to double entendres. For those of you who took the GED on TV high school equivalency, that’s a ‘double meaning’. A good example of this is the word ‘peace’ – as in ‘peace on earth’. Israelis tend to pronounce it as if they’re saying the bodily function ‘piss’. When I was in Israel, I attended a discussion of the Peace Process given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, given in English. In this case, the double entendre worked to his advantage – it made sense to me in both meanings. It went something like this:

(Israeli accent)

Good morning and welcome to Israel. I’ve been asked to speak to you today about the Piss Process and the prospects for piss in the Middle East. I think it’s appropriate to first start out with a history of piss in the region.

Back in the days of Golda Meir, we tried to make piss with our neighbours. The Arab culture is a strange one in that they are not willing to make piss with a woman. Personally, when my desire to make piss is strong, I would make piss with any person standing at my side, but I can’t speak to their culture.

Next we come to the Camp David Accords. Back in the 70’s all the Middle East Leaders flew to Camp David in the United States to make piss. It was hoped that the United States could provide the required push needed by all sides. Unfortunately, as many of you know, when a bunch of men get together, sometimes there is an anxiety about making piss. Regrettably, that’s exactly what happened. Even though we were all there standing side by side, the anxiety made it such that no piss came out of those meetings. The morale of the story is that if someone wants to make piss, no one can push them to do it — the push for piss must come from within.

Well, the 80’s were a dry desert in the search for piss in the Middle East. Thus, in the late 80’s, out of frustration, the Palestinians began to throw stones hoping to relieve the blockage in the piss process, and it worked. In 1993 we held a meeting in Oslo out of which piss began to flow. It ended with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat making piss on the White House lawn and the uncomfortable hand shake afterwards.

Everyone had high hopes that the Oslo Accords would quickly spread piss all over the Middle East. Unfortunately piss trickled ever so slowly, causing much frustration and disappointment. It is in this era, that of the late 90’s, that they started talking more about a piss process rather than piss itself. From this we learn that when people start talking about a piss process, they are not serious about piss. We all know that when you want to make piss, you simply make piss -– it’s not complicated. And this leaves us in our current state of long discussions about the process of making piss, with very little piss being produced.

In conclusion, it is my hope that we will soon learn from our mistakes and all parties involved will be sincere in their desire for piss and we shall soon see piss spread all over the Middle East.

ale · arab israeli conflict · Camp David · camp david accords · Case · cent · gold · golda meir · http · Israel · israeli accent · king · middle east · middle east peace · Minister of Foreign · Minister of Foreign Affairs · oslo · oslo accords · peace process · Red · United States · White House · White House lawn · Yasser Arafat · Yitzhak Rabin

Update: There will be a History Channel special on this: “Quest for the Lost Ark” on March 2, 2008 at 8pm.

I was reading a recent article in Time magazine and had to double check that I was reading an article in the “Health & Science” section instead of a book review of the most recent Dan Brown novel. The article can be found here:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1715337,00.html

Since this generation suffers from a mass case of ADD, let me use bullets to demonstrate how Tudor Parfitt, a professor at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, reveals the Ark to be a multipurpose carry-all for religious relics which doubles conveniently in times of war for a cannon. Yes, you read correctly.

• A Southern African tribe called the Lemba claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel. (They practice circumcision and call meetings using a rams’ horn.) No one believed them until it was discovered that the Lemba priestly cast had the same frequency of a specific marker to the Jewish priestly cast (cohens).
• The Lemba also claim to be custodians of the Ark of the Covenant. Based on the now verified first claim, Parfitt began to investigate this second claim.
• The Lemba call Ark the ngoma lungundu.
  • “The ngoma,according to the Lemba, was near-divine, used to store ritual objects, and borne on poles inserted into rings. It was too holy to touch the ground or to be touched by non-priests, and it emitted a ‘Fire of God’ that killed enemies and, occasionally, Lemba. A Lemba elder told Parfitt, ‘[It] came from the temple in Jerusalem. We carried it down here through Africa.’”
• His search led him to the ancient city of Senna where Parfitt believes the Lemba and their ancestors may have converged where he uncovered several clues as to where the Ark may be today.
• His search ended at the Harare Museum of Human Science in Zimbabwe where he found a drum like object, with remnants of the carrying rings and crossed reeds indicative of biblical origins.
• Neither Parfitt nor the Lemba contend that this object is the original Ark of the Covenant. The object was carbon dated to 1350 ad, which is some time after Moses. However, the Lemba folklore holds that the original ngoma destroyed itself and was rebuilt upon its own ruins by the temple priests.
• Parfitt contends that the Ark was in fact a drum which was a repository of relics and a cannon!

Don’t believe it? It’s hard to believe I admit, however, it is interesting to note that the Ark of the Covenant is brought into many Israelite battles at the head of the attacking force. Now do you put your relics at the head of an attacking force, or do you put your greatest weapon?

Truly the Lord hath delivered into our hands all the land; for even all the inhabitants of the country do faint because of us.” [Josh.2:24]

Still can’t believe it? I admit, I’m having similar trouble. Worshipping a weapon? I keep conjuring up images of “Beneath the Planet of the Apes”:

Africa · ale · ark of the covenant · Arkansas · Beneath the Planet of the Apes · Case · cent · circumcision · Dan Brown · God · Harare Museum of Human Science · head · Health · History Channel · html · http · Israel · Jerusalem · king · lemba · London · lost ark · MIT · ngoma · ngoma lungundu · professor · quote · RAM · Red · School of Oriental and African Studies · senna · Tudor Parfitt · Zimbabwe

My hope is that I’ll be able to post several eulogies, videos and pictures here.  Please send me anything you’d like posted.

Pictures:

Video:
VIDEO: Grandma Glass, Passover 2001
VIDEO (alternate format): Grandma Glass, Passover 2001

Obituary:

Original link here:

http://classifieds.hamiltonspectator.com/HOLCSApp/do/attribute_view_ad?adID=5360066&categoryName=ANNOUNCEMENTS&classId=3080

GLASS, Ida A beautiful woman passed away on April 23, 2009, just shy of her 97th birthday. Her name was Ida A. Glass and she will be reunited with her husband Walter P. Glass. Wishing you guys a good time up there. Ida Glass (nee Marcus) was an incredible daughter, wife, mother of Bernard and Reesa, grandmother and great-grandmother, sister and friend. Everyone who was lucky enough to have known her will remember her as a treasure. Funeral: Sunday, April 26, 2009 at 2 p.m. United Hebrew Memorial Chapel, 28 Ewen Rd. Donations to Shalom Village, Hamilton.

Eulogies:

Eulogy: Martin C. Winer (Grandson)  Ida A. Glass (1912 – 2009)

Grandma Glass brimmed with a bright and glowing personality which rose to fill a room much like her cakes and pastries.  Grandma was known to others as:  Ida Adele Glass.  Grandma herself added Adele to her moniker as though two names could not contain her character.  She was right.  Grandma was always on the go with one project or hobby or what have you.  Grandma attended bridge games, outing clubs, wrote book reviews for the local library, did knitting and needle point, collected antiques and of course there was the constant cooking and baking.

When Grandma arrived in Toronto for a holiday celebration, a ten minute procession of circular cookie tins lined with wax paper ensued.  One by one bearers would ferry in stacks of tins laden with banana muffins topped with walnuts, hand made strawberry jam strudel, coconut macaroons, mandel broit, and my favourite, blueberry cake.  Only after some time had passed and the procession had ended did Grandma and Grandpa make it to the door where they provided my brother and I with an eagerly anticipated Hot Wheel car or Lego set.  Visits from Grandma were a cornucopia of sweet delicacies and toys.  “Could anyone be cooler than this?” thought the 8 year old boy I was at the time.

Trips in the opposite direction, Toronto to Hamilton, were equally ‘cool’.  Grandma’s apartment was one of the first apartments we knew of to have a pool.  When we arrived we were greeted by the usual cakes and pastries and Tuna casserole.  Now Grandma new I was a fussy eater, not given to eating fish, and always had a supply of applesauce and Jello on hand.  Cakes, cookies, jello, a pool and toys.  My parents had told me that Hamilton was a city famous for making steel.  Well I didn’t see any steel here, I saw heaven.

Grandma’s apartment was adorned with antiques and the walls plastered with her needle point work.  The knick knacks were ever changing.  As a child I imagined that Grandma had a warehouse of knick knacks which she constantly exchanged to keep the place looking fresh.  It didn’t take me too many more visits to realize that Grandma actually gave away all her knick knacks only to create more to replace them.  The cost of owning anything in Grandma’s house was mentioning you liked it.  Visitors to Grandma’s place always left laden with baked goods, Grandma’s craft items and antiques.

Grandma lit up when her grandchildren were in the room.  She relished stories of what we had done and what we were interested in doing.  Her faith in us inspired greatness – not wanting to disappoint such an avid fan.  Grandma bought me my first doctor’s play kit from the IGA we were visiting to foster my interest in medicine.  Later on she, along with my Grandfather and Uncle, got me my first Merck Manual – a doctor’s handbook.  My interest in Science eventually led me to Computer Science rather than Medical Science, but I’m sure she’d be equally supportive of my choice.

Towards the latter years, with her health starting to fail, we saw a distillation of Grandma’s character with the key components still shining through.  In one of her early stays in the hospital I remember noting that Grandma had gone to the trouble of putting on a broach and was still well put together.  Grandma was always prim and proper.  In the convalescent home, her love for reading persisted to the very end, even beyond her ability to speak.  One small event sticks with me in that it perfectly captures Grandma’s love for all of us.

In one of the last Passovers she attended in Toronto, at the end of the usual procession of cookie tins, Grandma needed to sit down; she wasn’t feeling well.  She asked me repeatedly to fetch some icing sugar to ice the cake with.  I remember wondering: “what difference did it make, it was only family anyways?”  But there was no such distinction for Grandma.  Her family was royalty.  So when I realized the importance to her, I sprinkled the cake with icing sugar and she looked relieved.  I remember thinking that love can be uniquely expressed by a bunt cake.  It was her display of caring and affection to all that shared in it.  It was a culinary work of art made lovingly just for us from the kitchen of Ida Adele Glass.

————————————————————————————————-

Ida Adele Glass
Chayyalah bat Ya’acov v’Rivkah
April 26, 2009
Rabbi Jordan Cohen

There is some controversy around the Ayshet Hayyil nowadays, the passage from Proverb 31 which describes a woman of valour. In a post-feminist age, measuring the worth of a woman by how she satisfies the needs of her husband and children seems to be little anachronistic and ignores the essential essence of who a woman is as an individual. But for woman of a certain generation, these qualities of trustworthiness and integrity, of service to family and community, of dignity, kindness and strength, represent not only the most essential values of life, but ideals to be striven towards each and every day without exception. Ida Glass was, indeed, a woman of that generation, and, indeed, she represented all that our tradition revered in the Ayshet Hayyil .

Ida Marcus was born here in Hamilton in June 1912 to Jacob and Rebecca Marcus. She was the youngest of four daughters, all of whom pre-deceased her: Eva, Esther, and Millie, who passed away only recently. Throughout her life Ida maintained the qualities that would describe her right to the end of her days: she was a vibrant woman, endlessly optimistic and positive. She was elegant, with fine taste. She was an exceptional hostess, knowing all about protocol, and eager to mentor younger women to be hostesses as well. She was fiercely loyal to her family, beginning with her parents and sisters and continuing all the way to her great-grandchildren. Family was family, and that was all that mattered. She was regarded as a highly gifted woman. Although her education extended only to the end of high school, she always seemed to have solutions to problems that evaded even professionals. Many came to her for her wise counsel. This probably extended from her incredible passion for reading. She was always reading books, bringing home new books from the library and even start to write book reports, which she would share with her family, which were then published in the local library newsletter.

Ida worked for many years, in clothing and linens, and those she worked for quickly came to rely on her for natural talents at business and organization. But work and family were never enough, and Ida maintained a whirlwind of volunteer activity, taking leadership roles with the Temple Anshe Sholom and the Temple’s Devora Sisterhood, the National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah. And, as if this was not enough, there were the social activities: bridge games, outing clubs, the Saturday nighters, knitting and needle point, collecting antiques and the seemingly never-ending time in the kitchen cooking and baking.

Ida was in her early 20s when she met her beloved Walter and the married when she was 23, in 1935. Soon Bernard and Reesa came along, and Ida had her own family, which she longed for. Bernard remembers their childhood as being ideal, which their mother always there for them, constantly caring and providing guidance and wisdom. Reesa recalls their home having what seemed like a revolving door. The house was always full of people, the coffee pot always on and the delicious homemade goodies that were always available to go with the coffee. No matter how busy, Ida always had time for family and friends. Always available, always the consummate hostess, always willing to help. She was always doing something, hardly ever resting, and when she did lie down, she would do so for exactly 15 minutes and then resume her activities, totally refreshed.

The last couple of years were difficult for Ida and her family, and, beginning around the time of Walter’s passing in 2000, her health began to decline. She eventually moved into Shalom Village, becoming known there as the “Queen of Shalom” for her hospitable, caring and loving nature. She was a real lady, a true Ayshet Huyyal right to the very end.

————————————————————————————————-

Eulogy: Ida Glass by Reesa Winer (Daughter)

My mother’s house had a revolving front door.  Her home and kitchen were always full of people, the coffee pot was always on and delicious homemade goodies went with the coffee.  She was a extremely sociable woman who always had time for her friends.

She was actively involved in the community taking leadership roles.  Temple Anshe Shalom, The National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah.

She assisted several family members in their businesses, acting as a sales person.  She was always doing something, hardly ever resting and when she did she would lie down for exactly 15 mins. and then resume her duties, totally refreshed.

She loved nature, always commenting on the beauty of trees, flowers and the world around her. ————————————————————————————————-

Eulogy:  Ida Glass by Jeremy Glass (Grandson)

There are so many gifts of heritage and identity that a grandmother imparts  to her family along the way.  If there are core family values passed down through many generations, Grandma and Grandpa you instilled in us and others  integrity, honesty, pride, industriousness, grit and determination.  I will always remember you as so very well put together, so strong on your own two feet, smart as a tack, so giving to us on our visits; one must mention how stylish and polished you and grandpa were as a couple, and of course you were the best baker on this side of the continent.  The pride and loyalty you showed towards our father and Auntie Reesa have modeled to us what we should expect from our elders and what the young people around us should expect from us.

The Glass family has lost its beauteous matriarch.  Grandma Glass, I send you our love, and I send my sympathy to the rest of our family as we celebrate the heritage and pride you have modeled and instilled in us.

ale · apple · Bernard · cent · Coming · Hamilton · Health · http · Ida A. Glass · Ida Glass · Jeremy Glass (Grandson) · king · life · Martin C. Winer · Merck · National Council of Jewish Women and Hadassah · nature · OJ · Rabbi · Red · Reesa · steel · toronto · United Hebrew Memorial Chapel · video · Walter P. Glass · web

I recently downloaded a plugin called Mobilize by Mippin(http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/mobilize-by-mippin-wordpress-plugin/) to make my blog: www.martincwiner.com mobile compatible.  It was a very simple install with zero configuration required.  It was so simple in fact that I wasn’t quite sure if it was working at all. 

I went to a mobile emulator site and viewed my blog through it.  The results exceeded all my expectations. 

http://emulator.mtld.mobi/emulator.php?emulator=sonyK750&webaddress=martincwiner.com

I recommend this simple and powerful plugin for all wordpress blog authors to enhance exposure to the mobile web.

9/11 · author · blog · cent · http · king · mobile emulator site · mobile web · php · Red · web · www.martincwiner.com

“Would you like any bags sir?” the obnoxiously gum chewing, Lululemon athletic apparel bedecked cashier asked. “Yes, I’ll have two please.” She frowned disapprovingly through her gum chewing as to suggest “why don’t you just choke a pacific albatross to death? It’s faster.” If I subscribed to the latest internet fads, Facebook and Twitter (which I don’t) I’d know that this season, Lululemon is hot, and plastic bags are not. The cashier mercilessly tacked on a 10 cent levy to my bill for my environmental trespass, tossed aside my bags — me along with them — and addressed her next customer: a Lululemon toting trendy mother of 2.2 children. …

http://www.citycaucus.com/2009/06/letting-the-endangered-cat-out-of-the-plastic-bag

cashier · cent · Environment · Facebook · Great Pacific Garbage Patch · http · Internet · internet fads · lululemon · plastic bag · plastic bags · Red · toronto · Twitter

Some have accused the Toronto Sun of sensationalism regarding their request of the Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner, Brian Beamish, to release Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) suicide statistics for coverage by the media.  The very accusation of sensationalism reveals a double standard in the way that media outlets deal with issues of mental health.  This past February of 2009 no one accused any media outlet of sensationalism when they carried the story of a TTC fare collector who nabbed a disturbed individual who had pushed several youths on to the tracks. (http://www.cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090216/090216_ttc_collector/20090216/?hub=CP24Home)  There was no fear of copy cat pushing incidents in their coverage nor was their any need to appeal to the Freedom of Information act to secure information.  If you have the misfortune of being pushed on to the tracks, you can at least derive some solace in the fact that your city and your local news outlets will deem the story newsworthy.

If on the other hand you have the misfortune of being thrown on to the tracks by your own hand, rest assured that when you rest in peace, the story will be buried with you.  Officials of all stripes will claim that, for the good of the community, reports of suicides need to be silenced lest you invite copy cat attempts.  The TTC in its press release cites a Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention Media Guide (http://casp-acps.ca/Publications/MEDIA%20GUIDELINES.doc) which suggests that in order to: "discourage imitative or copycat suicides, it is important to avoid or minimize: Reporting specific details of the method".

Beamish, after having reviewed reams of clinical research, concluded that

"The evidence provided … establishes that news coverage which provides details of methods used, uses the word “suicide” in headlines, romanticizes suicide, or provides prominence to a particular death or attempt could reasonably be expected to result in harm. This is in contrast to the simple publication of suicide statistics which do not focus on the details of a particular death." 

(http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Findings/MO-2466.pdf)

He went on to cite a Center For Disease Control report which found, conversely, that the

"reporting of suicide can have several direct benefits. Specifically, community efforts to address this problem can be strengthened by news coverage that describes the help and support available in a community, explains how to identify persons at high risk for suicide, or presents information about risk factors for suicide."

(http://www.ipc.on.ca/images/Findings/MO-2466.pdf)

-*-*-*-*-

On August 26th, while driving on the DVP, listening to the traffic news, trying to navigate the infernal Toronto traffic, I heard of an attempted suicide off the Millwood Ave overpass.  Later reporting of that same event would only discuss a ‘police investigation’. (http://cp24.com/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20090826/090826_don_mills/20090826/?hub=CP24Home)  When the reporting changed to a ‘police investigation’ I knew that the attempted suicide was successful and that the media had changed its tune for our protection.  However, it didn’t take a PhD in psychology to know that ‘police investigation’ meant suicide so I wondered who the media were protecting?  The vulnerable?  If so, they only succeeded in protecting the most naive of them. 

Still, you won’t hear of any ‘police investigations’ regarding the Bloor St. Viaduct because a suicide barrier was put in place there in 2003.  As the result of some official sounding reports and official sounding thinking, some City Hall bigwigs decided that suicide was a ’spur of the moment’ type of thing and their spurious research suggested that barriers would be an effective countermeasure.  Suicide is in its final moment, perhaps, a rash moment, but that ignores the often months and years of prodrome before a person takes their life. 

In the wake of this recent TTC report, there is again discussion of the erection of barriers.  Barriers take a Not In My Backyard-Bridge approach to suicide; simply shunting the problem elsewhere.  The Toronto Sun has acted courageously in their coverage of this taboo topic.  I hope that other media outlets to follow suit with panel discussions of social measures that can help troubled individuals deal with their issues in a respectful and dignified manner.

Bloor St. viaduct · Brian Beamish · Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention Media Guide · cent · Center For Disease Control · City Hall · collector · head · Health · http · ILS · king · life · media outlet · media outlets · MIT · Ontario · pdf · Privacy Commissioner · quote · Red · Rome · servlet · the Toronto Sun · toronto · Toronto Sun · Toronto Transit Commission