On the road in India

Oh I have been watching nothing on the news lately. Not watching cable means I tend to become news deficient meaning that I don't cruise The Huffington Post as much as I used to because even my time on the internet has been parred down.
But

Today I caught the evening news and saw a report on the reaction to Prime minister Harper and his entourage having armoured vehicles shipped to India to use while in that country.
How were they shipped?

By C17 Transport.
The cost is said to be $37,000 an hour to run one of these babies. I think it's probably cheaper to ship the three vehicles by sea but would take a much longer time and the crew and maintenance etc for the C17 would still be a cost but at least the PM wouldn't be using the resources of the Canadian public coffers.
It is appalling to watch opposition parties run to the scrum and try to devour a frivolous point all of them squawking like Fort Mac Ravens over a Big Mac package lying on the roadside.
Sure there is a patina of special sauce on the package but really not much to fuss about.
First lets draw a few facts here.
1-The guy is a prime target because he is the PM of Canada in a country where there are many loonies who would take out the PM if they thought they had a chance.
Lets face it though, if you are older than 17 and a male u might b safe from the boogy man er the Taliban.

From families on motorbikes

2-Aside from the deranged malcontents you have the deranged drivers of the sub continent. I did a quick google on the subject and did not get a total but the India Times had a story with the head line "30,000 more road deaths this year compared to last."! We know that our death rate isn't near 30,000.

I heard a comparison the other day where the gent said that in one month the death toll on the roads of India equalled the amount that Britain would have in an entire year. 

I can see the want of our nation to take the security of the PM seriously and in that regard I think the government did just that. So why was it a story for a day?

to lovely large buses. India's road have it all

It took me about 4 minutes to go through the known data (that being from my brain) and come up with these probable scenarios. So what is with the news outlets and the opposition parties? Why must we always create a bogey man when something like this pops up? 
What seems to happen is that there is a juggling of words and numbers to suit each others case. 
The honorable members are all disgusted with some sort of waste or indiscretion and in three days it will never be visited by the public again. During those three days they have a chance to be seen as being seriously serious and in doing so create a pathway to partisan politics.

Seriously the opposition must have some inkling of what is going on? Why make pretty much any tidbit of knowledge into a scandal?
I would not fit well in politics I'm not partisan enough.

We don't need new parties but rather a change in what we view as politics. In how it is delivered and in how decisions can be more representitive of the public. 
Having a "new" party is not really going to solve much in that it is the delivery system and the mechanics of governance that are worn. New parts for old tech to be used in new tech applications will not work, we need a new machine that can do a different process not new parts for the old one that can't keep up. 

The Google that stole Xmas

Hello Blog fans and a prosperous New Year to us all. By the time I post this it will be 2014!
The season of Joy as the christians would call it is a time of year that doesn't really bring visions of presents or a little baby in a barn somewhere. It has been an anchor point in my life. A place on the calender that means family and close friends.

I started the season right with an influx of cash from an injury settlement.

I'm like everyone else in the world short of cash over the holidays. This was the first one where I had an excess. 
My travel plans included none of the sub -15 temperatures or the buzz which is Fort McMurray. 

I was looking forward to

Baklava Mmmmmm

visiting people like this old duffer to the left.
Yup my Dad!
I haven't had a lot of one on one time with any of my immediate family for a very long while so this was a wonderful opportunity to do just that.

I had time, from the 14th of December til the 3rd of January and some money so I made the best of these two resources.

Mom's thumb Mmmmmm

 My travels might have had a few travails thrown in but when your able to visit little characters like this one who cares if everything goes to plan!

O yes it is the newest addition to the family!

Can you help but smile at a little one like this?

She is one of the future and what does that future look like?

Happy...Maybe. Ps the good lookin woman is my ex wife

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Well it doesn't look like the three of us.


It has a display screen, it was a phone and now for millions of people it is their computer.

Grampy

                                                       All of the children and grand kids were in tip top shape and the weather was seasonable not too cold lots of snow. Perfect for the festive season.

Yet there was a grey paler, a damper, over the spirit of togetherness!

It seemed that Google was stealing xmas.

Comments had been made in the first leg of my journey as to the amount of time I spent on the phone.

While gathered around for holiday festivities the family was concerned  about the glow emanating from under the table. My gaze focused on my crotch made it seem I was an uncontrollable perv with a radio active penis. 
They noticed my glancing down every few minutes to the lush display to look at texts. 
The texts were from a friend who was to come out for the holidays but unfortunately couldn't.
That was the dull patina given to an otherwise brilliant vacation......... but wait it was only half over and after all I had a new S3 to play with and I did!
On with the vacation and into technobliss with Me and my S3!

And all sorts of people! 

Like my eldest grand daughter who is showing me that if you have no mitts a boot will do in a pinch!

But my constant companion was of course my phone which almost got left behind.

Why would I have left the sleek shaped phone with it's carbon fiber back and the monster display at home? 

Really if I had the original packaging the S3 would have been returned.

I know you can't believe it! You're thinking that I'm just old and all set in my ways that I can't handle this technology. 
Well only partly true.

I was expecting so much more from a Google smart phone or as it became to be known "My nominally intelligent phone".

I thought that I would plug the phone into my PC and whiz bang boom it would have all of my music and all of it's photos would download right away but no.

The music problem is solved and now it is the photo problem which needs to be figured out. Facebook has them, NO really, why can't they be on my PC?

So do I give a thumbs up to the S3?
Well really I think it is uber Google, it's too connected to Google but that is the view of a guy who took out the facebook mobile app because I get notified through Gmail.

I don't see the point of being so well connected but that is the beauty of apps and the ability to rid your phone of the ones you don't use or need.

The camera is ok for a phone what is sweet are the dual processors that allow rapid fire shooting. I didn't do much video but it works well enough, hint take the auto screen flip off.

But if I get away from the particular model and comment on smart phones in general I'd say they will and have changed the information
hiway and in doing so a friend of mine says watch for rate changes on data usage for the home PC.

Now I come to the larger Question what does this mean for the masses? 
Do these marvels of tech bring us a step closer to being "one" with the machine?
Always plugged in to the web always connected ready to read, reply, download, replay, record and share.
Well not yet but with the coming of age of blue tooth?
Well it is a step towards singularity in that now tech in it's full form is mobile and fiercely so, to the point of taking the desk top PC and making it a memory ala VHS tape.

A good thing not sure it is just inevitable looking at the curve so far. 

Oh the time it is a wastin

Thank you Bob for those fine lines of prose which described the stress and confusion over the changing of the guard.
Yes the times they were a changin. 
A work full of vivid images created through poetry of the modern age warming are hearts to the libertines who were seemingly taking the reins of power away from their fathers and the last vestiges, the patina of wholesomeness left by their grandfathers was rubbed away and polished into what we have before us today.
I have six or seven posts started but not posted. 
Why is this happening?
It seems pointless.
When I was young and I mean between 6 and 10 I some how was introduced to politics. Well lets say it was an process of intellectual osmosis rather than anything structured and focused which probably has done me right in keeping my sociopolitical horizons broad.
At that time I saw the political arena to be more self serving than a public domain. Well let me be more precise. It seemed to me as though partisanship was primary but that to me seemed very backward and inefficient.

The scene has not really changed, at least not in North America, through my entire lifetime and this is frustrating.
To the point of just dropping any political commentary, just personal items from now on. 
My day at the mall. 
The things my Grand Kids do!
Right it has to be bigger than me or it seems puny, this maybe a self esteem issue but for now I'm taking a break from the blog and revue my purpose in doing it.
  

Money is not the solution either.

A rogue thinker back in 1516

There are in any age those who lead the pack in thinking Sir Thomas More bringing the word and idea of Utopia to the masses was one of these people and while it was one of his lesser feats it is still a quirky little idea and his book Utopia has had a readership through out the centeries.
Not that More is a personal favorite but this idea of utopia makes so much sense unless you are an elitist, then it's simply loathed.
A society where we all are equal and all is made for the betterment of the society not for the profit of individuals.

This idea has been around for a while in the circles of humanists through out the ages.

Aldous Huxley wrote Island which is a fantastic story that transcends a purely utilitarian rant but contrasts one way of living with another.  

If we can agree that within the limits of physical laws any behavior is possible then it is only our imaginations that limit us by putting up barriers of fear which in my mind keeps us from ultimate success. In the end analysis we only lack will not money when it comes to changing our society.

Too often though we are diverted by rhetoric from politicians or some hardly remembered pundit on a right wing TV program disguised as a news outlet.

Repeated in the newspapers and on radio, be afraid of everything, a message that bombards the public.
Then out pops that word that idea of utopia, which is impossible to have in the state we live now.

There is a lot of confusion in our societies and it's level rises and falls as the level and frequency of outright deceit occurs in what we percieve as the halls of power. 

The problem is that there is a lack of trust in government at any level. This goes for Canada as well as the USA and well it should. 
The Harperists in Canada have fully hijacked democracy or what was left of it in the Great White North.

To the south there is no real hope within this generation for things to be fully righted but the road to sanity maybe started down if Obama is re- elected.

If he is it means two things to me, one is that there would have been a better than average voter turnout to tip the scales against the Republican hoards, two that the remaining long time voters have finally started to think about issues rather than rhetoric. 

In almost every country on the planet people have a general disregard for their government. I think this might be because we generally feel governed by rather than governed for. We see most decisions being made more with "economics" than the wellness of beings in mind.

We all feel the hidden hand of cronyism and it is time that it be stopped which will take imagination but it is possible in most western countries if we take what reins we have in terms of power and force change.

Sex is a great controller....ok it's just gratuitous nudity 

To continue riding the beast kicking wildly at it's flanks without controlling it's direction is truly pointless. 
We must demand change and with that statement comes a question....What do WE want to change?

The answer that most will give me is nothing, the average person is far more concerned with the stuff that affects them personally and haven't really gone very far beyond the drivel that MSM feeds them.

Many will cite something grand but in broad strokes such as more accountability for our elected officials. 
Repeating the mantras spewed out by Main Stream Media they think that their backs are covered by the diligent reporter or incredibly sincere anchor. If there is something on the horizon that should be pursued by the public the public is confident that it will be covered in the news. That is far from what really happens, the investigative reporter on one of those news magazine shows is tied to a producer who will get the slant and spin that the managers want and thus we end up with pablum for information.


Even the nightly news seems hackneyed in the way it seems to rely on drama rather than hard facts in a breaking story. No one can afford to investigate so the news outlet leans toward entertainment or outright engagement of the public through exciting the public's emotions.

It seems there a few if any who really dig into an issue and examine the facts rather than visit the emotions of issue.

So obviously I started this post before the re-election of Obama and the hunger strike in Canada by Chief Theresa Spence. 

It was her bands troubles with inadequate housing and questionable administration of funds for the Attawapiskat reservation that got this post started. Not on how this could happen where families are living in squalor in a country as rich as this. No I see this daily in all sorts of people from all sorts of back grounds so I have a sense that this is created either by the person living in squalor or by an outside force or power.
No this was a concern for me when I first watched the story break and waited for the longest time to see someone look into the money given to this reserve. It troubled me to see the slanting of the story and it seemed to be for dramatic effect rather than a fair report on a people done wrong. 
Oh please don't paint me as a right winger, these poor folk living in paper shacks are real and have been fucked over by someone. I just find it imprudent to think it is because the powers that be have done it when the evidence and history would lead me personally to a different conclusion. 

In the end analysis the story was probably treated fairly but the questions had to have been made to the research people at CBC at the start and so it seemed rather than even and balanced reporting it was slanted to tug at your heart strings but I think that a large percentage of Canadians had to be like myself and wondering what happened to the money given? 
This is not a question of prejudice it is a mathematical one taken care of by accountants. 
It is a question of being critical of any news outlet
but it also in a broader sense makes clear that money is not the answer but  rather determination is the hard currency of societal success. 
Empty words
....perhaps but if we have no moral guide but what we see projected into our phones and homes then we are in for ultimately EMPTY lives. 

The wait

Finally the Workers Compensation Board got a hold of me to arrange a one hour examination by their orthopedic specialist.
Good gosh they must have more than one!

You might think this has to do with my wretched  left thumb, yes it will be under the same sort of review in another year or so.

Could be for my back and shoulder which are in bad shape and related to a work injury.

It's none of those, this trip to Etown and this exam are related to my fractured calcanus and the arthitis which seems to have set into the foot.

The best worried look ever.

Two years after a traumatic injury claim the WCB looks at
lingering effects of the injury relative to your everyday life.
As I have said the fracture of my heel has resulted in arthritis forming which has led to constant discomfort that can ramp up to
severe pain making it impossible to walk without a massive limp.

Not to worry as the WCB is reputed to be fair in it's dealings with the injured worker so I can safely assume there will be some sort of compensation for a lifetime of walking goofy.

Really the limited mobility in the ankle and foot is not a huge deal it is really a question of the intense pain and bouts of aching that really affect my general disposition where walking with a bit of a limp just adds character.

To get to this point has been a bit of a cluster fuck in that my wonderful GP Dr Id failed to send the proper documents to WCB when they were requested.

The cause of the confusion is unclear but the result is crystal clear.....a 6 month delay in finishing the process. If it weren't for the delay I would have been paid out by now and onto phase 107 of my life.

That brings me to the question should I be hanging out in the Mac?
                       WAITING?

Or go to where I want to be?

Be with the people I am truly close to.....

 

Friends

And

     Family

            

money is not really the problem.

Money
and lots of it!

All
of
this

comes

from the sale of drugs in various locations and is just a drop in the bucket of goo known as the illicit 

DRUG TRADE.

It would truly stun you into a coma if you had all the illicit profits made in the world in one month from the sale of said illicit drugs in one place.

I'm thinking an arena


Or

Maybe

A big hole

Just think about the amount of diverted funds

 or resources that keeps

the under world alive.
It makes you wonder why the government does get in on it rather than fight it.

Money money money.

It truly is an illusion.

The act of gaining wealth by creating nothing is not very useful but it's a marvelous trick.

In fact I'll go out on a limb and say that it's counter productive for societies to be paying the warrior, the administrator, the clergy it's something for another commentary but through out the ages of settled civilization we have been paying out to people who are creating nothing of substance. We pay them primarily to keep others very much like themselves from taking what we have. 

It has only become worse as more of us create stuff without substance to pay someone who creates wealth out of nothing. 

But in regard to the 8-12 hours you've just spent with someone Else's purpose in mind! That was no illusion. You tore your ass away from the game console headed for some place that isn't yours and did some stuff.

Stuff you hopefully got paid for....

Why do we need to get paid?
Pretty simple right?

We need to live is the answer but we want and often get, substantially more than we need.

Question: If you had everything you have now all paid for would you need more?

Would you need cash?


MILF



Of course you would, at least in our consumer based environment you would, there is always something to "get", there is always something new and for some of us, there are our personal bad habits to support.

Yes we always want more and the system is built around consumption but not so much around invention.

Inventions simply cost too much in that they may or may not pay off.  No for the tech/entertainment (which I will probably call tektainment) industry it is about innovation and re packaging existing media devices for use by the slathering hoards all the while the issue of mining ore for use in screens and batteries that are in essence throw away items in North America is glossed over in the name of puter progress and soaring sales every time a new phone is unveiled.

Innovation like money is clever but gets to the point where it is valueless, innovation for innovations sake. 

 Tech isn't in it's self bad many many good things come from the silicon valley's around the world.

It is just that we put a lot of resources into products that are purely competitive and it is not a matter of having choice which is being serviced but rather the idea of saturation in the public eye to the point of selling more than the other guy.

Free market yes it is but is it a sane market?

The tech economy has to have innovation  not invention and a lot of innovation has created some machines and systems that are simply brilliant but year after year now rather than true inroads into the future I see more a rehash of the past with a spin off of billions of dollars.

  

Sometimes MONEY gets in the way of really good ideas.

It also can be justification for doing something half arsed or maintaining a stance that is just plain dumb.

But it is always with us, day in day out, we try to climb the money wall and get over the edge to the other side which is where you have savings!

This chart comes from the federal government.

Some people work hard and honestly while others like myself just haven't planned for anything and hope that somehow Old Age Pension will get us through.

Ok few of us are that dumb we know that it's impossible to live on pension unless your house is paid for or you live in a box..in an alley..behind the pizza place.

There is no morality in the make up of those who would like to control you, whether it be a street thug of some sort or a person of authority, generally these people are beyond remorse when it comes to getting what is in their best interest.

This in part has led to the dog eat dog, I'm fucking first, too bad about your luck vortex that our western society seems to be caught in. 

It is indeed the "Age of Entitlement" battling for top billing with the "Age of Enlightenment" in our supposed final decades.

As always when I am in Etown I walk from the greyhound depot to the Wee Book Inn and browse the ample and eclectic collection of used books. I came across (means I bought) a book by Andy Kessler "The End of Medicine".

In it he goes through a process of looking for cancer detection methods because of a genetic malfunction.
He finds some amazing technology out there in early detection and also finds that it's not being fully funded.

This is an example of the attitude toward money stemming a pool of resources that could end up eradicating many diseases.

In the end it is more the attitudes we espouse and the paradigms in which we live that shape the face of any society not the issue of whether money should be used or not. 

It's the idea of sharing wealth and public investment in the system of governance rather than the system used to keep track of commerce that should be heading the list of changes that we as people should demand.

Whether the demands are made to existing institutions or to new ones matters not as it is the call of active representation in governance. 

Making decisions as to what is commerce and what is fraudulent should be in the public domain.

Ergo the countries commerce is directed by the people of that region without the total adoption of a socialist ideology.
Dismantling the old boys school of government where money is the prime motivator rather than public interest is not particularly hard but finding something to dismantle it with maybe a bit harder.
So far the Occupy movement has come to us and it is in essence behind the idea of giving government back to the people and a return to the free enterprise system rather than the public funding corporate dinosaurs.

I have to find better ways to support it, how about you?