Saturday, July 29, 2017

Anger, Depression, and Despair Sinks in thanks to Government/Uber Collaboration

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Health Canada says Arsenic in Cigarettes, Bad - Arsenic in Water Okay


 
[Note: Just a little thing I wrote a few years ago in an attempt to expose the mendacity employed by busybody activists and opportunistic governments along with all of their rent seeking allies.


 
When I first posted this I realized that I was not 100% sure of my calculations since i was rather rusty on the chemistry so I invited readers to challenge my calculations. So far, no one has. 1 - (I know, I have no readers.)]


 
January 25, 2011.


 

Warning:
"Food contains arsenic. A rat poison."

Are Canadians Really as Stupid as their Government Thinks They Are


 
How long are they going to let their governments insult their intelligence?


 
According to the National Post, Health Canada is planning to change the warnings cigarette manufacturers put on their packaging.


 
One of the proposed new images shows a dead rat lying next to an ashtray with the tagline: "Cigarettes contain arsenic. A rat poison."


 
Well, Canadians.... so does food. According to The New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) which administers legislation covering food for sale in New Zealand and other things, "Most foods contain trace levels of arsenic."


 
According to Environment Canada, in it's Priority Substances List Assessment Report on Arsenic and its Compounds:

"The lethal dose in humans is estimated to be approximately 50 to 300 mg (or 0.8 to 5 mg/kg-bw) of arsenic trioxide, although severe effects have been reported following ingestion of as little as 20 mg"


 
According to ASH (Action on Smoking and Health) New Zealand:

the arsenic content of US cigarettes as cited by the US Surgeon General in 1989 was still very high - 500-900 ng per g in processed tobacco, and 40-120 ng in mainstream smoke per cigarette; on these data, 10% to 17% of the arsenic appears in mainstream smoke.


 
If we assume each cigarette is 0.8 g tobacco then this is a ratio of 40 to 120 ng in smoke to 400-720 ng per cigarette, or a ratio of 10% to 17% going into mainstream smoke.


 
This means someone smoking a good tasting U.S. cigarette can get as much as 120 billionths of a gram of arsenic from one cigarette. The truly frightening part of all this is that if we use the lowest amount of arsenic reported to cause a severe acute effect from cigarette smoking (20 mg or 20 1/1000ths of a gram, a person would have to smoke, 166,667 good tasting American cigarettes (about 8,333 packs of twenty) with the highest levels of arsenic, very quickly to risk a severe reaction.


 
Isn't that scary? A pack a day smoker would therefore have to smoke the equivalent of 22.8 years of cigarettes all at once to experience the pleasure of a severe reaction.


 
At Health Canada's lowest lethal dose (50mg), our smoker would have to inhale 416,667 cigarettes in a very brief time to risk death... about 20,833 packs... or about 57 years worth of cigarettes for our pack a day smoker. Whew!


 
Furthermore, from the New Zealand Food Authority website,

Inorganic arsenic, formed from the combination of arsenic with oxygen, chlorine or sulphur, is more toxic and is known to add to the risk of people getting cancer if it is regularly consumed. However it is not usually found at high levels in food.


 
And...

the Joint Food and Agriculture FAO / WHO Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA) has set a provisional tolerable weekly intake (PTWI) of 15 micrograms / kilogram of bodyweight / week for inorganic arsenic.


 
So according to the FAO / WHO if we have a person who weighs 150 pounds or about 68 Kilograms, the provisional tolerable weekly intake would be 68 X 15 = 1,020 micrograms, or 1.020 milligrams which is equivalent to about 8,500 cigarettes (425 packs of twenty) per week.... a serious 60.7 pack a day habit. Talk about a chain smoker, this guy would have to light one up every 71.4 seconds for twenty four hours every day to reach the provisional tolerable weekly intake. If the guy expects to get any sleep then he will have to smoke even faster.


 
According to Health Canada again, the annual average level of arsenic in municipal treated groundwater in Quebec, for example, between 1990–2002 was 2.0 µg/L. Taking our provisional tolerable weekly intake for a 68 Kg person of 1,020 micrograms, a person in Quebec would have to drink about 1,020 µg / 2.0 µg/L = 510 Litres of water a week, about 73 litres per day to reach the threshold (vs only 425 packs of twenty cigarettes per week).


 
Interestingly, Health Canada suggests an average daily intake of 3.7 litres of water for Canadian males over the age of 19. In Quebec, 3.7 litres of water would, on average, be equivalent to about 3.7 X 2.0 µg of arsenic for a total daily intake of about 7.4 µg of arsenic or, about 7.4 µg X 1000ng/1µg X 1 cigarette / 120 ng = about 62 good tasting high arsenic American cigarettes per day.


 
If Health Canada intends to warn Canadians about the arsenic content of cigarettes why do they not also require warning labels on our kitchen faucets???



 
[January 25, 2011. Note: There are outright lies. And then there are half-truths. Outright lies are easy to dispel. Half truths are much more devious.


 
In case anyone doesn't quite understand what I am trying to say here.... (pardon me for assuming.)


 
I don't doubt the truth of the statement that cigarette smoke contains arsenic. But that is only the half of the truth. When you dig a little deeper and contextualize the fact, the outright mendacity of it all ought to smack you across the face.


 
To think that masses of sheeple, capable of grasping only the first half of the "truth," then go out and vote for the people who provide them with this "truth," are the ones who, ostensibly "rule," in a democracy, is enough to bring the blood of any thinking person to a boil. (And/or resist a trip to the medicine cabinet for some Gravol)


 
But I should not say thing like that. It's rhetoric that might lead some pinko loving anarcho-commie to go around slitting throats and shooting people....


 
Oh....


 
But I forgot.... it's not the anarcho-pinko, schizophrenic, leftist, commie, Glenn Beck hating, Cloward and Piven Mau lovers doing the killing...


 
It's us libertarians who believe in freedom, free trade and self self-ownership. (Yeah! We're the bad guys!)]

Monday, July 17, 2017

Line-Up Phobia

There is a new form of mental disorder that seems to be spreading rapidly.

Have you noticed it?

Go to a nearby Tim Horton's or MacDonald's, or similar venue and you have a good chance of seeing this disorder in practice.

The other day, when I went to pay for a couple of items at a local Dollarama, I observed another example of this phenomenon. A lady was standing at the checkout having her goods tallied. I was third in line. The second person in the line was standing about 16 feet away from the first person. If not for the fact that we were standing in a narrow aisle stocked with last-minute items, it would have been impossible to determine whether this person was actually in line, or just loitering.

In a saner time, I would have politely asked the woman in front of me if she was in line, and if not, would she kindly excuse me for walking around her. But these are not sane times.

I have to admit, I was annoyed by this behavior. Maybe it's a sign of age. Or maybe it's because I like things to make sense.

Someone standing 16 feet away from the first person in line makes absolutely no sense to me.

Anyway, while standing there observing this situation, I begin to roll the issue over in my mind.

Perhaps this is a new form of etiquette. The only problem I see with this is that, if the third person in the line were to be a practitioner of similar etiquette and, correspondingly provide an additional 16 feet, and the fourth person .... and so on, the fifth or so person observing this rule would be about 80 feet away from the cash register.... somewhere near the back of the store.

The bigger the store, the bigger the line.

Right away, I think you can probably see a potential problem with this new form of line etiquette: confusion.

The greater the gap between line-up members, the more difficult it will be to keep track of the order of service.

Picture this: You are at a supermarket, and you are in the laundry detergent and shampoo aisle nearest the back of the store. With some difficulty, you conclude that this is the end of the line. So you stand there, leaving 16 feet for the shopper in front of you. Of course, someone else could be doing exactly the same thing in the pop and snack-food aisle beside you. He can't see you and you can't see him.

Can you see how this could lead to confusion, or even conflict, if the two shoppers arrive at the check-out at the same time?

A while back I went to the Delta MacDonald's. I noticed there was only one person placing an order at the desk. There was also a group of people standing on the other side of the floor-space in front of the counter. In a saner age, this group would represent those customers who have already placed their orders and are now just waiting for their food.

I walked up and stood behind the first person in line. Out of nowhere, some guy comes up to me and says "excuse me, but I was in line ahead of you." Except that he wasn't, otherwise we would have been occupying the same space. His claim to be ahead of me was thus demonstrably false.

Having already observed repeated instances of this collapse in line-up protocol, I could not help but reply, "Well then, maybe next time you should try actually standing in the line." He gave me a look of stunned non-comprehension.

I have been on this planet for over sixty years now and I have to say, this is a fairly recent phenomenon. I am old enough to have experienced standing in many queues over the decades. Movies. Rock concerts. Grocery stores. Amusement parks. Airports. Taxi ranks.

This pointless space gap is a new thing. I've only been noticing it for about two or three years. It seems to be getting worse.

Some would say I have too much time on my hands if I spend it on line-up dynamics. Maybe that is true.

On the other hand, whenever I notice changes in human behavior, I can't help but think that such changes are not merely random, but are instead indicative of broader trends.

So I decided to Google the phenomenon. The best I could come up with was that some people are afraid to stand too close to other people as a result of "social anxiety disorder."

This explanation does not satisfy me. If the reason for leaving a large gap between person 1 and person 2 is due to person 2's aversion to standing too close to other people, then person 2 should be expected to experience similar discomfort from the person standing third in line, or directly behind them, unless that person also suffers from the same disorder, in which case, that person is standing back near the electronics aisle.

But if person 3 does NOT have the same disorder, then person 3 would end up standing uncomfortably close to person 2, in which case, it would be reasonable to expect person 2 to move forward in pursuit of relief. In my Dollarama example, therefore, the lady in front of me should have moved her buggy ahead by 8 feet, thus splitting the difference between the feared adjacent line-up participants.

But if she did move ahead by 8 feet, I would have followed behind her leaving the customary gap of about two feet between us. And then she would have moved up another 4 feet, and so on, until the check-out line began to resemble the check-out lines we have all grown to know and love.

Conclusion

The bizarre phenomenon of excessive line-up spaces is not explained by "Social Anxiety Disorder."

This topic deserves further exploration. It could be related to the excessive use of smart-phones and other accouterments of the Internet age. As people increasingly live their lives interacting with electronic devices, they become less engaged with the real world that surrounds them.

And in a world where all you need to do is tap an app to satisfy all of your social and consumer needs, the need for active participation in life is correspondingly diminished.

And in a world where active participation is becoming obsolete, the value of one's natural assets - arms, legs, eyes, ears, brain - depreciates.

Which means, maybe the reason why some people leave a 16 foot gap between themselves and the cash register is because they are just plain fucking stupid.

---

Gee. There doesn't seem to be much social anxiety disorder in Venezuela these days.


Not to worry though,

There is a new app designed to help Canadians make healthy choices.

If successful, this technology can be adapted to all sorts of other government funded apps designed to control how we work, the information we consume, the politics we favor, the movies we watch, the music we listen to, the transportation we choose, and how many squares of toilet paper we use to wipe our asses.

Save the trees.

Wow! These guys were way off in their prediction that it would take until 6565 before you wouldn't need a husband or wife. And they sure never anticipated that it might come to a point where it would become common to inquire as to the gender of the spouse. Other than that, a brilliantly prophetic song.

Worth noting:

The core of McLuhan’s theory, and the key idea to start with in explaining him, is his definition of media as extensions of ourselves. McLuhan writes: “It is the persistent theme of this book that all technologies are extensions of our physical and nervous systems to increase power and speed” (90) and, “Any extension, whether of skin, hand, or foot, affects the whole psychic and social complex. Some of the principle extensions, together with some of their psychic and social consequences, are studied in this book” (4). From the premise that media, or technologies (McLuhan’s approach makes “media” and “technology” more or less synonymous terms), are extensions of some physical, social, psychological, or intellectual function of humans, flows all of McLuhan’s subsequent ideas. Thus, the wheel extends our feet, the phone extends our voice, television extends our eyes and ears, the computer extends our brain, and electronic media, in general, extend our central nervous system. [Source.]

Or corrupts it.


On other fronts:

This Week in Stupid (16/07/2017)
Sargon of Akkad

The Young Turks make me puke.

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Do Bike Lanes Save the Planet?

Cannon St. Bike Lanes Analysis

Purpose:

To examine whether the theory that reducing the efficiency of traffic flow can be reasonably expected to have an impact upon the Earth's changing climate.

Basis:

These are estimates derived from quick Google searches. They are designed to generate some ball-park numbers to determine whether the vehicle exclusion lanes along Cannon St. E., from Sherman Ave to Hess St., are actually saving the planet, (Assuming the AGW hypothesis is not a hoax.)

Traffic volume on Cannon St. East: minimum 9,000 vehicles per day
Excessive vehicular idling as a result of bike lanes: 1 minute per vehicle per trip (derived from experience)
Amount of CO2 emitted during politically induced idling: 69 g/min
Length of bike lanes (Sherman to Hess): 3 Km
Number of crack-head bicycle trips per day: 550
Total number of bicycle trips per day: 600
Average CO2 emitted by cyclist: 21 g/Km
Average CO2 emitted by moving vehicle: 185 g/Km

Assumption

For the purposes of this discussion, it will be assumed that the vehicles and the crack-heads cover the entire 3 Km distance of the route.

Analysis

The 600 daily crack-head bicycle trips along Cannon St. generate about 600 trips X 3 Km/trip X 21 g CO2/Km = 37,800 g CO2.

If these trips had been by automobile, the total amount of CO2 emitted would be about 600 X 3 Km/trip X 185g CO2/Km = 333,000 g CO2.

CO2 reduction as a result of cycling instead of driving: 333,000 g CO2 - 37,000 g CO2 = 295,000 g CO2.

The bicycle lanes thus reduce carbon emissions along Cannon St. E. by an impressive 295 kilograms per day.

On the other hand, the unnecessary idling caused by the vehicle exclusion lanes result in a total of 9,000 trips X 1 minute idling per trip X 69 g/min idling = 621,000 g of CO2. (621 Kg.)

Therefore, the politically sexy, but environmentally indefensible, congestion caused by bike lanes along Cannon St. E. results in an increase of 621 Kg - 295 Kg = 326 Kg. of CO2.

Conclusion:

The bicycle lanes along Cannon St. from Sherman Ave. to Hess St. result in increased CO2 emissions of about 326 Kg per day. Multiplied by 365 days, that yields an additional 118,990 Kg of totally unnecessary carbon "pollution" per year.

It appears that the claim by politicians, that they have the power to influence the Earth's climate, by screwing up traffic flow, is no more credible than their demonstrated expertise when it comes to road maintenance, or taxicab regulation, even if we assume that the AGM hoax is actually correct.

Were you expecting something different?


Video: Driving West on Cannon St. Pre-Vehicle Exclusion Lanes (A.K.A. - Bike Lanes.)

Note: Zero idling. Zero politically induced CO2 generation.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

It Ain't Always what you Say

I know this isn't supposed to be funny, but Gerald had me giggling all through it. Perhaps my jocular interpretation of much of this presentation reveals a certain crudity on my part, but I can't deny that his expressions closely mirror my own in response to much of what I see, or read, from "respectable" news sources, and the crud most politicians usually spew.

Besides, if I want to laugh, my last resort these days, is to watch so-called comedians. I tried that about a year, or so ago. I tried to watch five or six stand-up comedy shows on Netfix. They were all puke, especially Amy Schumer (gag.)

They weren't funny. And in the case of Amy Schumer, they weren't even remotely funny.

The best kind of laugh is one that happens unexpectedly because someone says something, or does something that just makes you blurt out a chuckle or a guffaw. Lionel is good at that.

Most will probably not see the humor I see, any more than I see humor in most, actually all anti-Trump "jokes" that cycle into my in-box these days. I don't know anything about the science of jokes, but I will go out on a limb here and conjecture that a joke must, at the very least, have a credible premise. Even slapstick requires some resonance with real life.

If the premise is false, then the joke just isn't funny.

Perhaps that is why I was never a big fan of the "Lucy Show." She was just too stupid to be stupid. At least when the Three Stooges (more like the Three Politicians,) were painting each other's faces and eating each other's paintbrushes, I could visualize such things happening in real life, and they probably have happened millions of times. (Especially at Hamilton's City Hall.)

I know Gerald is not trying to be funny. I believe he is deadly serious, and with good reason.

It ain't always about what you say, but how you say it.


Oh, one more thing I noticed this past week. A brand new set of stop-lights on the west side of the intersection of John St. N. and King William. More public money being pissed away on an airy-fairy agenda, no doubt linked to valiant efforts to prevent Earth's climate from changing, by converting the, already ridiculously narrow, King William St. into a two-way street so that the trendies who get drunk in the adjacent bars can persuade themselves that one vs. two-way traffic on that street is somehow, "progressive" even though the only logical result to be expected is increased congestion in the area.

What's next? A mandate that all door hinges in the neighborhood be switched to the opposite side so that the door will open the other way?

How the people of Hamilton can tolerate these repeated insults to their intelligence is a mystery to me. I think the government run public schools share a lot of the blame.

The Three Stooges: Politicians at Work.

"If you guys would watch what you're doing, you wouldn't make so many mistakes."

Saturday, July 1, 2017

My Encounter with an Uber Cab Driver

I had an encounter with an Uber cabbie this morning.

When I pulled into the parking lot at the front of my townhouse complex, I noticed this guy sitting in a small, Uber-like car, staring at this dash-mounted smart-phone, and looking confused.

He was sitting in front of unit #1.

I got out of my car and started walking toward my own unit which is also numbered. It's not a gigantic complex, so in my simple, low-tech, cab driver's mind, I figure that if you are looking for a unit number at an address, the first thing you should do is look at the number on the unit. If that number is "1" the next thing you do is look at the number on the next unit.

Often, though not always, that number is either a "2" or a "3" depending upon the numbering format. In my complex, the next number is "2" and so on. For a taxi driver that information can be critical.

So this guy looks up at me as I am walking by, and asks me if I know where unit number "100" is.

"Here we go," I thought, "this guy is an amateur Uber driver who has been lulled into believing that consuming his capital for a little bit of cash in the bank, is a new form of, "job."

Now, if I were a normal Canadian, all giddy with this 150th year of our nations's birth (Happy Dominion Day!) and so on, I might have simply explained to the man this,

"Well, the next unit is "2" and the next one after that is, "3" and so on, and so on, with a possible minor deviation here and there. So if you just drive around the loop, I feel confident that you will find the unit "100" without much mental effort.

But I was not in a good mood. I had just finished a Friday night taxi shift. Post Uber. (When most of the Uber drivers clog up the bar districts like Hess Village, Augusta, and King William streets to "share" their cars with people who need a taxi. While the "low-tech" taxi drivers sit around the same areas with their thumbs up their behinds, thanks to their local politicians.)

So my thinking was,

"Wait a minute, aren't you a representative of that marvelous high-tech wizardry that ingeniously connects riders with drivers? I thought you had an app for that?"

And my next thought was, "Yeah, and this is what all of those spineless, principle-less, cowardly, and blatently dishonest (See, for example, Hamilton Mayor, Fred Eisenberger's preposterous claim that selling out to Uber by creating a two-tiered taxi bylaw had the "backing of Hamilton's taxi industry!") politicians unthinkingly endorsed when they opted to award an unlimited number of taxi licenses to Uber, based upon the ruse that Uber was not involved in the taxi business. (!)

And what have we got? A bunch of freakin' amateurs who think that their own thinking, judgment, and experience, can be replaced by an app.

Before long, people will not even bother to get off the couch to go to the bathroom. They will just shit in their pants and then, tap an app, to summon a bunch of app-oriented nursing assistants to rush in and change their diapers.

Anyway, I just looked at this paragon of the new "sharing economy" and it's claim to rely upon "smart regulations" and so on, and so on,

So I asked him, "Are you an Uber driver?" To which he replied, "yes."

and I replied,

"Go fuck yourself."

That seemed to confuse him even more.

Poor guy. It was nothing personal.

Friday, June 16, 2017

Oh, this is sweet.

A lottery for accessible taxi licenses, in a city which has just decimated the taxi industry by granting unlimited free taxi licenses to Uber... and what do we get?

Whomever is designing policy for the City of Hamilton has come up with this ridiculous idea of a lottery for accessible taxi licenses... that would require the applicant to spend about $45,000 for an accessible vehicle, in order to have access to a taxi market that has been utterly decimated by the stealth introduction of unlimited taxi licenses to the Uber cab company.

(Compare that to Uber's sweet deal. Instead of even spending the $45,000 to provide even ONE SINGLE accessible Uber cab, all Uber has to do is pay an annual $20,000 for an exemption to the AODA law. It's a nice law if you can buy it.)

My first guess is that most of the people on the taxicab priority list, who have been waiting for 25 to 30 years for a standard taxi license, thumbed their noses at the city's dastardly bait and switch offer for a taxi license, conditional upon the license being for an accessible taxi. In other words, for a license that is virtually worthless. (my guess is that almost 100% of those who DID accept this pathetic offer have already made informal arrangements to have someone else actually operate those vehicles.)

Let me spell it out for you in simple terms.

Even though the taxi market was restricted to a limited number of providers, Pre-Uber, the market was already saturated. The existing supply of licensed cabs remained idle 75% of the time.

When the city government decided to grant access to Uber to the Hamilton taxi market, the equivalent of taxi owner's licenses for micro-pennies on the dollar, the earnings per licensed taxicab were reduced by 30% to 50%.

And in the face of impending disaster for the non-exempt taxi operators in Hamilton, the City is casting a net in anticipation that there will be enough IDIOTS who will be lured into this "deal." They are calling it a "lottery" but the odds of winning are even worse than the "Cash for Life" scam. This is a lottery where the ticket buyer has absolutely zero chance of winning.

I know a guy who was victimized by the pre-Uber accessible license scam. Instead of being offered the standard taxi license he had been waiting for 28 or so years for, he was offered a conditional license. His license would only be granted if he spent $45 G's of his own money on an accessible vehicle. Right off the bat, that just isn't fair. But who cares about "fairness" when it comes down to politics?

And he fell for it. (In his defense, he didn't really have much choice. The loving government made him an offer he couldn't really refuse. It was either a wheelchair plate, or nothing. "Accessible transportation is a right, not a privilege." Therefore, the guy who waited 28 years for a license finds he has, no rights, no privileges, only obligations. By the way, that is the essence of liberalism.)

So now, he finds himself being singled out to drive unreasonable distances, because he is the only accessible cab "available" at certain times, for short, unprofitable trips, all because, under the AODA, disabled people have rights, and he has to pay for them.

Poor guy. He doesn't know what hit him. He probably even votes Liberal.

I derive no pleasure in seeing how badly this man has been screwed by the ideology he probably unwittingly votes for. In a way, I almost admire him for his ability to carry on, despite knowing that he is the victim of a grave injustice.

And now they want to sucker people into buying MORE accessible taxis, even as the market shrinks.

Never before has the IGNORANCE, or blatant sociopathy, of Hamilton's political decision-makers been so openly displayed.

I know some very resourceful and clever entrepreneurs in the Hamilton taxi business. Maybe one of them will come up with some kind of scam whereby they offer to lease those accessible licenses, under the table if necessary, in order to squeeze some marginal profit out of the enterprise.

But anyone who would accept one of these licenses, with the intention of incurring the massive expenses involved in buying and operating their own accessible taxicabs....

Is fucking nuts.

Accessible Taxicab Owner Licence

"The licenses were initially offered to individuals on the Taxicab Priority List and there are three remaining accessible taxicab owner plates available for 2017. As a result, an electronic lottery will be held for all individuals who are qualified to hold a taxicab owner licence."

Read it and puke.


Tempo