Wasn’t He the Guy Complaining About Airline Service?
Taking “hackneyed” to a new level.
Have not these zipperheads seen Spinal Tap? Best in Show? The lounge-singing chicks from Saturday Night Live?
Kathy With a K
Excerpt from the novel, The Men Who Killed Oates:
One of the best and worst things about preparing for a wedding was that Rob and Kathy were obliged to talk about themselves. People asked a lot of questions. The idea for the honeymoon often came up.
“Why Nova Scotia?”
“It was Rob’s idea,” Kathy said. “He went there as a child and has fond memories.”
“We can take our bikes and go camping,” said Rob.
“Halifax is a great party town,” said Kathy. “It has tons of bars.”
“Plus, there’s the ocean,” said Rob. “It’s nice and there’s good seafood.”
“I’ve only been there once,” said Kathy. “To a basketball tournament. We had a great time that year.”
“We’re just starting out,” said Rob. “We can’t afford to fly anywhere right now.”
They left very early. An hour east of Toronto, on the highway to Montreal, they got into their first married argument. It revolved around which route they should take to Nova Scotia.
“We can go up on the west side of the St. Lawrence River,” said Kathy. She held the Rand McNally Road Atlas in her lap as Rob piloted the Civic. “Doesn’t that sound nice? Becka’s boyfriend recommended it. He said that it’s a beautiful drive. Plus, we can take the ferry across the river at St-Simeon to Riviere-Du-Loup. That sounds awesome!”
“Why would you want to do that?” said Rob.
“I don’t know,” said Kathy. “I’d just like to see that area and take the ferry. What’s wrong with that?”
“Maybe I don’t want to.”
“Why not? It’d be nice.”
“When have you ever listened to Ted before? You can’t even call him by name.”
“He’s a knob, but he’s traveled a lot. Look,” said Kathy. She pointed to the Quebec page of the atlas. “We could take this way down east. On the way back, we can take the regular road—here it is, the Trans-Canada.”
“Why not take the Trans-Canada both ways?” said Rob.
“Both ways?” said Kathy. “That’s crazy! Why not see something different if we have the chance?”
“We’d make better time. I don’t want to take some detour that’ll put us behind schedule.”
“We’re on our honeymoon! We don’t have a schedule and we’ve got two weeks! The only schedule we have is to drive to the Atlantic Ocean, hang out, turn around, and drive home.”
The rain started. Rob flicked on the wipers and squinted down the four-lane highway. He adjusted them to a rapid pace: the quick, thumping was meant to express frustration (even anger) to Kathy. They gave each other a violent silent treatment.
Quote of the Mornin’ to Yeh
Over the past few years we have repeatedly been told that we should quit using hydrocarbons. Fine. Global daily hydrocarbon use is about 200 million barrels of oil equivalent, or about 23.5 Saudi Arabias per day. Thus, if the world’s policy makers really want to quit using carbon-based fuels, then we will need to find the energy equivalent of 23.5 Saudi Arabias every day, and all of that energy must be carbon free.
Robert Bryce; Power Hungry
WSJ review here.
Wind Turbines Need Wind
Somebody from the Nova Scotian media finally raises a couple of critical questions about windmills. First, the wind must be, er, blowing in order for them to generate energy:
…on the day of the big announcement, there was barely a breeze, underscoring the unfortunate fact that wind turbines produce electricity only about a third of the time, often when there’s little demand for it.
Second, wind-turbine health effects are not clearly understood at this time.
Ward and Mae Brubacher, a couple in their 50s, who live 750 metres from two turbines on remote Fitzpatrick Mountain, Pictou County. Ward says when strong winds blow, the noise vibrations are like the booming of car stereo speakers. “Many times we have laid awake in bed with all the windows shut in the house listening to the whompf, whompf, whompf,” he says. “You get up, you read, you wait until you’re exhausted so you can sleep through it.”
"What could possibly go wrong?"
Wind-turbines produce extreme low-frequency noise pulses (infra-noise). Anecdotal reports are to be taken with a grain of salt and can be employed by the media to personalize any agenda. But the effects of ”regular” noise exposure from, say, industry or hobbies are well documented: these include cochlear hearing loss, tinnitus, hypertension, anxiety, headaches, and sleep problems. It’s reasonable to assume that intense, pulsating, sub-sonic blasts of noise could have similar effects.
Nina Pierpont has written a book about “Wind Turbine Syndrome” which attempts to define a cluster of health problems that may be caused from living close to these windmills.
You’d think that this issue would have generated a plethora of research, but a quick search of a university library database resulted in only a few articles. This might seem surprising, but the truth is that research funding schemes have resulted in university cultures which are enthusiastic about green-friendly endeavours. Also, transducer limitations make it difficult to study this issue in the lab since most microphones and receivers (speakers) do not function well in the extreme, low-frequency range.
Whatever the case, it’s interesting to watch authorities scramble over one another to get these projects going. The Coast and editor Bruce Wark aren’t exactly from the right-wing, climate-denier caste. So it’s refreshing (and a credit to Mr. Wark) to see these issues brought forward.
So What?
The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts has a Miles Davis exhibition running through to August.
Bold Weaver
University of Victoria climate modeler Andrew Weaver is suing the National Post for libel relating to a series of articles that ran this past winter:
The four articles, published from December to February, claimed that Weaver cherrypicked data to support his climate research, and that he tried to blame the “evil fossil fuel” industry for break-ins at his office in 2008 to divert attention from reported mistakes in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on which he was lead author.
Megan O’Toole’s news story from December 3 boasts the headline:
Attempted Breaches Show Larger Efforts to Discredit Climate Science: Researcher.
This Terence Corcoran column is likely one of these items. Other Corcoran columns from that time period include this, this, and this. Other National Post stories on climate change during this time can be found here.
Mr. Weaver is being represented in this action by McConchie Law Corporation.
From the January issue of the Canadian Association of University Teachers Bulletin:
He says the goal of the people who stole and published the e-mail archive was to distract from critical discussions aimed at achieving a binding figure for emissions reduction at the climate conference in Copenhagen.
“This is just one in a series of incidents that have been part of a sustained and well-organized attempt to discredit science and harass scientists, and scientists are being targeted precisely because the evidence is overwhelmingly demanding change,” said Weaver.
This article is from the February issue of the Bulletin. Further background info can be found at rawstory.com here.
Quote of the Mornin’ to Yeh
"Pass the popcorn, Lloyd."
Wow! It looks like Avatar or something!
CTV newsreader, Jacqueline Milczarek about an image taken by the Hubble Telescope.
Size Matters: N.S. Passes Wind
Last year, Dalhousie University’s David Wheeler and Michelle Adams recommended to the Nova Scotia government that the province generate 25% of its electricity via renewable sources by 2015.
Yesterday, Premier Dexter one-upped the distinguished hired hands: he laid out plans for N.S. to generate 40% of its electricity by 2020. You go girl!
He’ll have to rebuild the grid to accomplish this.
Unbiased commentator, Reuben Burge (president of RMSenergy) who probably doesn’t stand to gain anything from this type of activity was impressed by the size of Mr. Dexter’s…er, targets:
“We know we are going in that direction and we have to meet it, and those are huge targets.”
Robin MacAdam from N.S. Power was also turned on:
“I think we can get there. I think they are stretch targets but they are achievable.”
Translation from mandarin-speak to plain English: the targets are a big pile of Antigonish manure. The government’s foray into $green$ energy is founded on a crock. How reassuring. Have fun with those elevated electric bills!
Hindsight: No Pun Intended
Did this happen after their Socrates class?
The Ecology Action Centre distributes materials about “glass dildos” to schoolkids:
On Wednesday, 23 students in Gorsebrook Junior High School’s Grade 8 French Immersion personal development and relationships class went home with copies of the Ecology Action Centre’s Between the Issues, which deals with local and global environmental matters.
Next week: the Canadian Taxpayers Federation visits and hands out bondage pamphlets.
Conserve Nova Scotia Tax Dollars: Budget to Double
"And so on."
Efficiency, Nova Scotia style:
It will be late spring or summer before the new agency designed to help Nova Scotians cut their energy use will be up and running, says Energy Minister Bill Estabrooks.
Estabrooks said he was “disappointed as minister” that Efficiency Nova Scotia isn’t yet in place. The target for replacing the provincial government’s Conserve Nova Scotia, as well as taking over Nova Scotia Power’s demand-side management program, was March 31…
…
Efficiency Nova Scotia will be funded through a charge to Nova Scotia Power customers. Nova Scotia Power expects to spend $22.6 million on energy efficiency this year, and has applied to the Nova Scotia Utility and Review Board to charge customers another $2 a month so next year’s amount can climb to $41.9 million.
Conserve Nova Scotia’s budget this year is $23.4 million.
