Ideeahs

It has been a long time since I have written something here.  I feel a need to get things off my chest so I decided to use this platform to get my thoughts out. There are many reasons as to why I want to complain about the state of politics.  The reasons have all arisen over the last week of reading about various events happening around the world.  From wars to much less dreadful topics. Election results.  Decisions taken locally and others globally.  They have all reinforced a belief which I have and which I am frustrated to have.  I don't really know how to address the issue as I do not see a solution. The issue at hands is politics.  More specifically the issue is politicians.  The issue is the kind of person that is attracted into serving their country and how they might change once elected. Ever since I was a young boy I have always had a negative outlook on politics.  I grew up in the Province of Quebec in Canada.  When I was a chi...

Speaking Tuesday to legislators in London about Wimbledon, British Sports Minister Nigel Huddleston said: "Absolutely nobody flying the flag for Russia should be allowed. Many of us would be willing and able to [allow them to] compete as non-aligned, non-flag-bearing entities. But I think it needs to go beyond that. We need some potential assurances that they are not supporters of Vladimir Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to try and get some assurances along those lines." (source =  https://www.cbc.ca/sports/tennis/wimbledon-british-government-in-talks-about-russian-players-1.6386102 ) The invasion of Ukraine by Russia has sparked much debate in the world of sports.  Should Russian teams be banned from competing?  Should individual Russian athletes be banned?  Should teams of athletes be allowed to compete but without flag, uniform, country name, anthem, etc.? Some athletes have said that it is unfair to mix politics and sports.  They r...

The hiring process for an employee into a company typically relies on a network of opinions and advice from people.  Before hiring references are checked, education levels confirmed, typically referrals from colleagues help, background check are completed.  Even once hired typically a 3 to 9 month probation period exists during which a dud higher can get the boot.  You want to minimize the risks. Why then is it that the UK is already talking about removing certain sanctions against Russia? (sources:  https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/uk-lift-sanctions-russia-these-conditions-putin-ukraine-317482/  and  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/26/crippling-sanctions-could-lifted-russia-withdraws-ukraine-says/ ) Is it good enough that Russia withdraws from Ukraine and commits to no further aggression?  Do we trust the Russian government? Have they historically shown their ability to behave properly towards their citizens and their neighbours? I ...

The world is complicit.  The entire world is complicit.   Of course Vladimir Putin is the man responsible for causing so much of the human pain and physical destruction going on in Ukraine at this moment.  However the rest of the world is complicit. For too many years (for all of history one could say) we have turned a blind eye to the negative actions of one person, organization, company, country and allowed economic benefit to rule over, to take precedence over, good behaviour.   For years the world has allowed Putin and Russia to do as they please as it was deemed to be to the benefit of the world to turn a blind eye and choose to see but ignore their despicable behaviour.  While we purchased oil, gas and wheat from Russia we sold them all manners of goods and services. We even invited the bastards from The Kremlin to believe they were part of a world order.  Too many pictures have been published with the assholes from the Kremlin shaking hands and smili...

Ukraine. It am writing this on March 2, 2022.  The invasion of Ukraine by Russia is now in its seventh day.  I have so many conflicting thoughts and emotions.  What should the nations of the world do?  What specifically should NATO and the EU do?  What would I do? The animal in me, the emotional me, the me who might live in Ukraine or have Ukrainian blood would want the world to launch a full-scale assault of Russia.  I would want these nations to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, stop all Russian airplanes and missiles from overflying Ukraine, bomb Russian positions and go after the bastards in the Kremlin.  I would feel that those people sitting in the comforts of their homes, watching and commenting on the destruction of my country, are hypocrites and complicit.  While sanctions have an impact they will take months, if not years, to have an impact.  They will not stop the bombs and the deaths.  I would be mad, angry, disappointed, pi...

Compromise is a requirement for progress.  No matter how stubborn one might be there will always be a point where a choice needs to be made.  Choosing one path or way over another always involves compromise as the paths all differ to varying degrees, each with their own pros and cons.  Some pros always need to be let go of and some cons need to be accepted.  No single party picks up all the spoils.  But all win something.  A compromise. Maybe I need to be a little more specific.  Compromise is important if what you desire is progress in a non-chaotic and steady way.  If you equate pros and cons to steps forwards or backwards compromise does not eliminate the steps back but it does, I believe, lead in smaller steps backward while continuing on a forward motion.  The steps forward may also be smaller but having more people in agreement the decisions taken are accepted and acted upon in a more unified and cohesive fashion.  Let's just say t...

The Sandy Hook tragedy has sparked many comments from all kinds of people. Journalists, politicians, left leaning, right leaning, city slickers, country bumpkins, seniors, children, parents, the educated, the uneducated.....you get the picture.  Human beings of all colours, beliefs, ages, regions and backgrounds have commented either publicly or privately. Whether or not an audience read or heard our thoughts it is likely that, in the grand majority of cases, we all reacted with instinctive emotions - shock and sadness.  In the end, those instincts, the ones that unite us all as a species, shows an amazing amount of unity among the seven billion humans on Earth. Unfortunately, as the minutes passed from the time we heard the horrible news, our initial reaction of shock and sadness gave way to that other uniquely human characteristic - our ability to think, recall and imagine.  And so our divisions started showing. The need to defend.  The need to protect. ...

The first day of the year is, arguably, the most optimistic day of the year. With determination we, as individuals, decide at this moment of time to affect some positive change into our lives or those of others. As a result of this clean sheet of paper offered to us by the New Year we feel that all the possibilities of the world are in front of us awaiting the reach of our hands. We can write the script. With all of the previous years baggage thrown out on December 31st there is nothing left to weigh us down and prevent us from attaining our objectives and resolutions. It is an optimistic day and we are hopeful that this sense of optimism will last for the remainder of the year's days. A new beginning. It would seem to me that this would, therefore, also be a day when world leaders might be feeling slightly more optimistic than normally. They may be entering 2011 with some real beliefs that this just might be the year that they can, as individuals, affect positive change...

I have not been as active writing as this was my first week back in the workforce. It has given me many ideeahs. Here is the first. I am working for a global corporation that is active in 100+ countries. My manager has employees in three countries. I deal with people in at least seven on a near-daily basis. The office I work in has Spaniards, Arabs, Finns, English and French Canadians, Americans, Chinese, Africans and Vietnamese. We speak English and French - interchangeably. I have heard Chinese and Arabic as well. On phone calls we speak English, each with our unique accents and native-tongue sentence structure. Our emails are all in English. In the office I can see my colleagues. On the phone I don't - unless we use videoconference. Some dress in suits, some business casual, some in shorts and sandals. It all doesn't matter. It is a dynamic, modern-thinking place - exciting and full of people that don't seem to have the slightest care for where you come ...

Yesterday the city of Montreal was touched by a plume of smoke that was at least 400 km long. About that far north there were (are) many forest fires burning out of control. This smoke did not have much of an impact on the citizens of the city. People with severe asthma and respiratory issues were told that they should limit their physical exertion - but that was about it. Some of the fifty fires were started by lightning but some were caused by man. Further south, in the Gulf of Mexico, there has been talk of other plumes. These particular ones all caused by man. Two oil plumes have been discovered by scientists from various institutions. The latest, discovered on May 27, is thirty-five kilometres long and close to ten kilometres wide. Not surprisingly these have been disputed by the CEO of BP. "There aren't any plumes". Ya....OK...whatever Tony. What scientists are saying is that these underwater plumes risk getting caught up in undersea currents. The re...

As the days and weeks go by without a solution to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico my opinions surrounding this latest disaster facing Earth are crystallizing.  I have read articles which have underplayed the oil spill by stating that hurricane Katrina had greater negative impact.  What a bunch of BS. Admittedly, Katrina was a terrible natural disaster.  Approximately 1850 people lost their lives and the damage estimates have been calculated at $81 billion.  But it was a natural disaster.  Of course, man made it worse by building cities in flood plains, below sea-level and not maintaining the protective dykes.  Had man not tried to control the flow of water in the area much less people would have died as the concentration of population would have been lower. The day after the hurricane passed nature was already back in equilibrium and in its more familiar calm steady-state.  For humans the calm would take months and years (and for some it likely ...

In my upcoming book, " Avoiding the Blues ", I mention how the advancements which politics and corporations have brought us are poised to bring about their demise.  The last 24 hours have shown this yet again. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the UK is in the midst of the 2010 parliamentary race.  As the world now knows he called a woman "bigoted" while on the campaign trail.  The fact that a human being called another a bigot is not newsworthy in and of itself.  Stuff like this happens on Main Street on a constant basis. The fact that an elected official, the Prime Minister no less, was the culprit makes it newsworthy.  Somehow the elected office means, to most, that these particular humans are something extraordinary - in the true sense of the word.  Why should these humans somehow be considered to be something more than ordinary?  Sure they got elected (well, in most cases) to office.  They have had to suffer through much scrutiny of their e...

Over the last few years I have often heard how expensive extracting oil from the Alberta oil sands was both in terms of dollars and energy use.  An article in the April issue of GEO magazine really hit the point home for me.  I had never spent the time to read about what was happening in northern Alberta and, now that I have, I just do not understand why we are allowing this work to go on. Some numbers: -The boreal forest that has been zoned for the work is one quarter the size of France. -To get to the oily sand you need to dig an average of 50 metres below the surface. -So you need to deforest 141,000 square kilometres. -It costs $25-$35 to produce a barrel of oil here.  On the North Sea and in Saudi Arabia the costs per barrel are $15 and $5 respectively. -Between 2 and 4 tons of sands are required to produce a single barrel. -It takes the equivalent of two barrels of conventional oil to produce one barrel of oil sands oil. -It takes 300,000 cubic metres of ...

The ash cloud that Eyjafjallajökull has spewed over Europe has brought about all the expected behaviours.  "Gordon Brown under pressure to get Britain flying" screams our The Times.  What a ridiculous headline.  Yep, it is up to him isn't it? First you have the regulatory bodies, the arms of elected governments.  They have taken the cautious approach of banning almost all flights since they do not really know what the consequences of flying through an ash cloud are.  Erring on the side caution they have determined that jumbo jets filled with 300+ people should not be flying.  After all the job of a government is to protect its citizenry. Understandable. Airlines, over the last twenty-four hours have also started to take make their voices heard.  We have heard about flights through the ash cloud with airline CEOs on board.  Somehow the fact that the CEO is onboard is meant to alleviate all our fears.  The bottom line for the airlines is n...

The government of the province of Quebec tabled its budget yesterday. Based on what I have read in various newspapers it seems that we have, once again, a government that seems to know only how to do one thing: increase taxes. Now I realize that the budget deficit is out of control and that the province's debt is extravagantly high. Yes something needs to be done. Basic finance tells indebted individuals that they must either spend less or find a way to earn more to get their personal finances back in order. Since earning more tends to be a harder for individuals then spending less, most of us (who actually choose to address the issue) will tend to spend less. Getting a higher paying job is not easy and can takes months or years. Salary increases are rarer today than they were in the past. So if you want immediate effect you spend less and you prioritize. So now let us look at government finances. It would seem that different rules apply. Apparently earning (hmm....bad ch...

The infinitely small and large have always amazed me. The size, vastness and space of the universe are just as incomprehensible to me as are the unimaginably small particles that make it all up. In The Times this morning I read that the Large Hadron Collider had finally swung into action. This is pretty cool physics though I must admit I don't understand much of it at all. In reading the article I found the following sentence of particular interest. Physicists from around the world watched the developments at the LHC live on the Cern website, while live weblinks to Fermilab in Chicago, Florida State University, Tehran and Zurich were beamed into the LHC control rooms. Specifically the bit about Tehran, the capital of Iran. I find it interesting that CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, would have a live weblink connecting it to Tehran. Now I know that nuclear in this sense does not mean nuclear bombs but rather the smaller bits that make up atoms, protons, qu...

There are two interesting items making the news these days that have some parallels and that are causing certain folks to be quite hypocritical. The cancellation of Ann Coulter's talk in Ottawa due to protest has been described as a knock against free speech, expression and beliefs. I agree. People should be free to speak what is on their minds and universities, of all places, are meant to be places where free speech is enshrined. Student bodies have always been vocal, and have entrenched themselves in the ideology of the two sides of any argument. Professors are protected behind the system of tenure. All good in my view in allowing good, strong debate. If you don't agree with Coulter's beliefs you can demonstrate (your right as well) but, in Canada, we, as far as I know, allow for free speech. Personally I think Coulter is an attention seeker and find her exclusive, single-minded view of the world outdated and offensive. I can't help but think of the ongoing bur...

Getting masses to move is not easy. Succeeding in getting politicians to agree is hard work. In both cases it takes a lot of lobbying, of meeting, of convincing, of debating. There is a lot of misinformation that is spread and many exaggerations that are made. Success means that you need to have enough people who are open-minded enough, accepting enough, to change their opinion and swallow their foolish pride to admit they may just have been wrong. Today is World Water Day. Saturday at 8:30 PM Earth Hour will be celebrated. A mere day and hour to try and convince more of the masses that they need to make a difference. Does it really matter and do these events make a difference? Of course, action for a day or an hour has no real direct impact on the issues being raised. By turning your lights off for an hour, tapping yourself on the back and then going back to having your 1000 watts of ceiling pot lights turned on at all times you are not going to make a difference. Centuries ag...

Walking in downtown Montréal this week I noticed two large adverts from the Government of Québec. "Merci de me servir en français", words in white on blue, printed on eight foot posters. I find it interesting how in the second largest French-speaking city in the world there is a need to say this. These adverts just do not make much sense to me at all and feel like they belong in another city, maybe, for example, geared towards French tourists walking in the streets of New Orleans as part of some campaign to attract more French speakers to vacation in the Big Easy. Obviously this is not the case. This campaign, run by the Office Québécois de la langue française, is geared to its own constituents. Many seem to think that the French speaking majority of Québec have something to worry about - at least in Montréal. I would rather say that they have something to embrace as the change that is happening simply will not be stopped. Statistics Canada has come out with a report tha...

A little over twenty years after he was freed I am finally reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography entitled Long Walk to Freedom. I strongly recommend the book. It really takes an amazing strength of character to be able to see the positive side of one's enemies especially when they directly harass you and your loved ones as well as your dearest friends for so many years. He is an inspiring man. What I want to mention in this post is a thought that popped up as I was commuting to downtown Montreal yesterday morning. I was sitting on the train reading Mandela's autobiography. In front of me a woman was reading Eat, Pray and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. The man to my left was reading the Globe and Mail newspaper. All around me people were reading magazines, listening to podcasts, watching video, reading newspapers and books. Listening to music. Some slept. The words I was reading described a completely different world. One where a newspaper was a rare and valued item. ...