To be creative is, in fact, Canadian

To be creative is, in fact, Canadian

Margaret Attwood in the Globe and Mail

Judge Orders Mistrial in P2P Piracy Case - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

Judge Orders Mistrial in P2P Piracy Case

Courtesy PC Magazine

The salient point:

Thomas' actions, the court said, were far different than the sort of copyright infringement the law was set up to prosecute, where works are copied and then sold for profit.

Retro look: US Financial Crisis: Reality is in the Market: Question: what if anything has really changed?

Waking up this morning to the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the firm that took over Bear Stearns, its brought to mind the fact that underneath the Conservative policies of President Bush, was a neglect of the "economy."

In my own thinking, when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taken over by the U.S. Federal Government last week, the U.S. citizenry took over $7 trillion in debt, bringing the debt level to $16 trillion for those citizens, or $45,714 each.

Canada went through financial trouble at the Federal level starting with Trudeau and Mulroney deficit spending built up substantial national debt but nothing near the levels the U.S. has quickly run up (about 70% less).

Arguably, the U.S. is fighting a war in Iraq and in Afganistan, and as a result, you do have impacts domestically but most American's have not been prepared for the cost of those wars, other than in the blood of their youth.

But war fighting takes a toll financially, are the Americans expecting this to be costless?

The US defense budget was $626 Billion, 3.7% of GDP in 2007, but that excludes the amounts for Iraq and Afganistan that are earmarked, one can see a country spending a trillion dollars per annum for war related activity.

And even arguably another half trillion on top of that: see "The Trillion Dollar Defense Budget."

But that is not the only woe for the U.S. "economy."

While it is Conservative to say that Federal spending is out of control, with President Bush' most recent budget proposing a $240 Billion deficit, it belies the flip side to a deficit is also on the revenue side: examining figures for Income tax collections v. Social Security collections, we find $1.25 Trillion v. $927 Billion, a difference of only $323 Billion.

In other words, with President Bush reducing the top marginal rate to 35% for 2003 to 2008 (from 39.6% in 2000), he has reduced the rate of income tax collections while the economy grew, that benefited only those earning over $357,000.

So why help the rich when your country has a debt of $9 trillion? Whoops, $16 trillion?

Its Conservative.

In Canada, so far, tax revenues as a percent of GDP are 33.4% v. 28.2% in the U.S. (provisional 2006). We do not yet have a fiscal deficit but are now on the borderline from the years of Liberal management to the Conservative give aways to the rich of this country.

Big Canadian Conservative give away's?

1) Cutting the GST benefits who the most? The rich. The poorer arguably have to spend their entire earnings and do get a break. But the rich can buy Mercedes and boats, and holidays and legal services. You can see who got the bigger break on GST.

2) New Tax Exempt Savings vehicles. How can the average family in Canada ever contribute $5,000 a year to such an account, so that the income from it will be tax free? The fact that it accumulates, it basically makes investment income tax free. Who can afford investments? The rich.

3) On Climate changing greenhouse gases, the regulation of the intensity of emissions while not controlling the absolute amount of emissions, will do nothing. The climate will change long before any intensity driven model has any effect on reducing absolutely any emissions.

Note: The Dion solution is not also an optimal way of doing the job if the job is to reduce air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Taxing and giving back to those who cannot afford those taxes, seems laudable, but optimal, no. There will be a dead weight loss to the new taxes and an administrative cost to redistribute the tax collections.

Can we Canadian expect more Conservative promises to cut taxes over the election period? Perhaps.

Certainly on Copyright issues they showed in Bill C-61, that they were beholden to U.S. private actors who hold copyrights and not the Canadian public nor Canadian artists and copyright holders.

It all portends a great deal of difficulty for world financial markets, and a hunkering down time for all.

(Ed. Note: All in all, a first post in a long time to break my writing cobwebs.)

Experiment in Wordie

I tried listing some of my core values that I write about on my blog in "Wordie."

Wordie is a java applet on its home page, that allows you to scramble and colour your words (any) in patterns you choose and randomize.

This is my first crack at it:



My second crack:

New Free Music Site: Live Concerts for Streaming Only

My blogging has been slow with many captures but little follow through.

My funk began with some introspective thinking about Deep Brain Stimulation and the anguish of those who are lifted by it, versus the failure of traditional treatments to help. Depression is an illness not easily lifted once set in.

Speaking of depression, not many have both exogenous and endogenous factors working on them at once SMILE.

For me, I know I turn around stronger for the experience. For others, they don't make it.

For my bloggin interlude, I have facebooked extensively, and will have to take a 12 step program from it, as I am meeting very interesting people and making friends that just are not possible in any other world, virtual or otherwise.

But all is not lost to my readers: today I found a great little site that has classic rock concerts for free, requiring only a login. The catch of the site is the cross-selling opportunities but the hook is free streaming of concerts that are not visual but audio, with the feature that the audio is very well done.


Wolfgang's Vault

100 Acorns

100 Acorns

100 days of conceptual instructions by Yoko Ono.

Very cool ideas to take into ones consciousness, and then perhaps take into action!

UPDATE:

IMAGINE PEACE AT TORONTO'S NUITE BLANCHE

Yoko Ono's IMAGINE PEACE project is coming to Toronto for the first time this fall as part of Nuit Blanche, the annual all-night festival of contemporary art that runs from sunset Sat 4th Oct to sunrise Sun 5th Oct, involving dozens of international artists.

Thousands of Nuit Blanche visitors will tie their wishes for the world to Ono's Wish Trees near Lamport Stadium.

After the festival, the wishes will be gathered by the artist and stored as part of the IMAGINE PEACE TOWER in Iceland.

A large IMAGINE PEACE billboard will probably be erected to face the Gardiner Expressway and 40,000 IMAGINE PEACE buttons will be given to Nuit Blanche participants.

http://www.scotiabanknuitblanche.ca
http://www.IMAGINEPEACE.com

Guns N' Roses Leaker Responds to Press Coverage | Listening Post from Wired.com

Guns N' Roses Leaker Responds to Press Coverage | Listening Post from Wired.com

ICANN votes to expand top-level domain names

ICANN votes to expand top-level domain names

The action means that companies and other organizations eventually could run their own domains. For example, eBay Inc. could run the domain .ebay, and Microsoft Corp. could run the domain .microsoft. Currently, the endings of top-level domain names are limited to a few which include .com, .net and .org, as well as individual country codes such as .ca for Canada or .uk for the United Kingdom.

Prices to register the new domain names, expected to be anywhere from $150,000 to $500,000, would most likely prohibit individuals from applying for new domain names. ICANN said the high fees would allow it to recoup the approximately $20 million it expects to spend on implementation of the new policy

Quebec authorizes use of electric cars on roads

Quebec authorizes use of electric cars on roads

About time as some very creative small, cheap to operate cars, are built right in Canada but Transport Canada wishes to block them.

Not in Quebec!

Hat tip: CTV.ca

Wallace Broecker Geochemist, Saving the Planet, Storing CO2, Smithsonian Magazine

Wallace Broecker Geochemist, Saving the Planet, Storing CO2

Smithsonian Magazine

Curing Depression: Deep Brain Stimulation + "Talk" Therapy

Northworthy had the pleasure of attending the Centenary lecture of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Psychiatry, Wednesday June 18, 2008. Celebrating 100 years and a large faculty, the event was well attended and the presentation by Dr. Helen Mayberg was fascinating: Deep Brain Stimulation.

Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) was a culminating effort after a great deal of other work had been done by neuro-scientists. DBS itself is relatively trivial with a surgury to insert a 1 mm lead with a small emitter, using MRI to guide the final location of the emitter, within the brain. The lead is attached to a wire that runs over the skull down through to the shoulder where the pacemaker is placed.

The pacemaker in this case, emits a steady frequency to shut off the overactive or underactive implicated centre of a brain activity, that in the case of unresponsive depression, caused the depression to be imediately lifted.

With techniques and technology like this under pure research and development as a viable procedure, to relieve symptoms, inevitably Northworthy asked a question at the end of the presentation, discerning :

"If the causality of such a depression is an unknown, as was a given in the presentation, and the relief of symptoms the aim of such work, would the successful alleviation of the symptoms, afford the opportunity through psycho-analytic therapy or other cognitive ("talk") therapy, to discern the cause, and once identified, permanently alleviate the symptoms, and the need for the brain pacemaker?"

To this question, Dr. Mayberg, smiled and said she was not going to repeat the question but expounded on the idea for several minutes, of permanently curing the depression, to concluding that what was put forward by Northworthy was a "testable hypothesis."

Northworthy has been interested in the most difficult problems since a child, and certainly mental illness and other diseases of the mind-brain certainly rate high.

In my core thinking, since the separation of the mind and the distinctive segments of brain operation by Dr. Wilder Penfield, at McGill, the observing mind as well as the unconscious mind, detect things and reacts to events, possibly in the case of depression by blocking further painful thought and feelings (affects). In a sense Dr. Mayberg's focus on "area 25", the blockage, relieves the depression by shutting it off. The question then became obvious: with the patient's blockage alleviated, can we now explore why it was put up there in the first place?

Cases of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder where Depression presents itself to mask the causality, are not normally attactive to medical research due to funding issues from companies that hope to create a 'pill' to solve the symptoms, returning the person efficaciously to 'normal' society. In the case of Dr. Mayberg, she is affiliated with a University, and has received funding from organizations interested in pure research. Hopefully, pure research will also examine the causality of the depression, and not just the symptomolgy, even if the latter relieves the person of their depression with a potential dangerous side-effect: the ability to think of why they became depressed in the first place.

There is of course another way of thinking about this too: the depression itself was not protective but rather it just "was," a trigger of a genetic predisposition, that in earlier days would have been sufficient to cause the person to be a straggler, and a cast away. In current times, sometimes a "lepper" if institutionalized (a "mental case"), sometimes, just someone hidden in the closet, or at home.

Either way, depression is rapidly overtaking any other illness as the largest cost to Canada in the billions in lost productivity and health care costs.

The conclusion of Northworthy is that the future is indeed much brighter for the work of Dr. Mayberg, and other scientists, in cross discipline approaches, where say material science gains in nano-technology, are providing the opportunity to treat at the molecular level illnesses, fighting against the DNA - the genes - we all carry as triggers, predispositions and time-bombs to diseases and to what may be premature death.

In the biggest picture, "cancer" as we knew it, will within the next 10 years be something we all can know about, and by choices, deal with in advance.

The horrible news however is that in terms of genetic counselling, we as a society are more concerned with cosmetic procedures, luring the medical graduates away from what we will need more of as difficult questions of ethics, cost, continued living, arises with future genetic testing, where we are sorely lacking the professional expertise to deal with conclusive test results.

For more reading on this breakthrough, "A Depression Switch? New York Times Magazine" and an interview with Dr. Helen Mayberg, "Deep Brain Stimulation for Treatment-Resistant Depression: An Expert Interview With Helen S. Mayberg, MD."

Here is also a Charlie Rose show where Dr. Mayberg is a guest. It is discusses the state of the art in the sciences (I watched this live).



Another link of interest might be CheckUpFromTheNeckUp.ca

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada's Open Internet

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada's Open Internet

An open forum for Toronto's tech/web/media communities hosted by:

Matt Thompson, SavetheInternet.com and SaveOurNet.ca
Steve Anderson, SaveOurNet.ca and The Campaign for Democratic Media
Mark Kuznicki, Remarkk.com, Open Community Evangelist, TorCamp

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24th, 6:00pm
Location: Fionn MacCool's, 181 University Avenue @ Adelaide, Toronto
Snacks will be provided, cash bar

Eventbrite

Author Sues Booksellers for Selling His Books - 6/17/2008 - Publishers Weekly

Author Sues Booksellers for Selling His Books
From 6/17/2008 - Publishers Weekly

This is what real copyright laws should remain focused on: the professional distributor who infringes the publisher's and the author's rights.

Consumers?

We are not supposed to be the problem in "copyright law" as we have rights otherwise under Constitutional law to protect us and in some cases, damn us, with no protection.

In my opinion, what the Harper government is doing to the Copyright Act of Canada should be done in a commercial law via a statute outside of copyright law, that specifically overrides the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, using the notwithstanding clause.

Till then, freedom of expression rules.

Real police upset over TSA's pretend-police costumes - Boing Boing

Real police upset over TSA's pretend-police costumes

Courtesy: Boing Boing

Will Canada do the same thing?

TheStar.com | Canada | Why is Nfld.'s Williams Ontario's best friend?

Why is Nfld.'s Williams Ontario's best friend?

TheStar.com

"He's a Progressive Conservative with no love for the Liberals. But Newfoundland's combative premier says he'll do all he can to help bring down Stephen Harper"

Copyright Reform: Treasonous and Venomous?

Copyright Reform Bill 61 AKA
"The Canadian DMCA: A Betrayal" by Michael Geist

I would go farther than betrayal.

Secret "Conservative" deceit, foreign plutocracy, and totally undemocratic.

I would add foreign "Conservative" as these guys do not represent Canadians, but rather apparently the global foreign "Conservative" movement.

I mean the Schreiber affair if you dig into it, you find out that there is this network of "Conservatives" that seem to want to rule the world their way, whatever way that is.

Further the foreign to Canada "Conservatives" these guys are, have no relation to the Tories, and say the Joe Clark, who fought very admirably tooth and nail against Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau as loyal Opposition Leader, and eventually Prime Minister, however briefly.

Was it a strange coincidence that for the first time in Canadian history the unveiling of a former Prime Minister's portrait who was still living and attending that unveiling, in the Central block of Parliament, went unaccompanied by the sitting Prime Minister?

This Copyright Bill-C61 and the recent Immigration Bill are the tip of the Internationalist "Conservative Agenda" they will not share with the people.

As I have asked rhetorically before, how are these guys going to get re-elected?

They have already started a smear campaign against Dion (is this the second round of same with no election in sight?)

While the recent apology to the Aboriginal people of Canada in the "committee as a whole" format, allowing the Aboriginal leaders to accept the goodwill of the Harper speech writer, what about drinking water, decent housing, mineral rights, reparations, and treaty settlements, including giving them the lands described in the treaties that we agreed to honour through the Crown?

Add in the Residential Schools, and it won't be long before that speech writer's words are forgotten and the goodwill of one day, generates another "Betrayed" group by these "con-servatives."

Is it therefore "treasonous" I ask? I think so when a foreign power dominates your political government, casting aside the history of the laws, "Reforming" them, without an electoral mandate, to a foreign political movement.

Stephane Dion, had his chance to get an election on the Immigration Act changes buried in a financial bill but chose to give more time to the foreign to Canada "Reform" group.

While Mr. Dion might have felt weak, wait until the next and the next "attack" ads come, as the "Reform" collects money internationally (????) or from where at our limits on political financing (where did Harper get his money to run for the "Leader" is still an unanswered question and Elections Canada is having a field day on the "Con-servatives" last election financing),

But to a last question: what will bring down this minority government and when? In the GTA they have no chance of winning a seat but the Liberals have damaged themselves with their base for sure, due to their lack of principles.

So again, can the New Democrat, Jack Layton come up the middle between a secretive Reform, Globalist Conservative movement foreign to Canada, that is causing our allies and friends to rethink our country's position internationally, and an unprincipaled Liberal Leader, who keeps appologizing for supporting that foreign movement in Canada?

Is this too harsh for a nice afternoon? Or not harsh and apparent enough?

Copyright law could result in police state: critics

Copyright law could result in police state: critics

Michael Geist - The Canadian DMCA: Check the Fine Print

Michael Geist - The Canadian DMCA: Check the Fine Print

This is Professor Geist first take. He will have more to say but it is not good "fine print."

Personally I saw a "performer" interviewed and she thinks the songs that others write and compose are her works. Wonder how the writers and composers feel about this "performer's" view of their work.

Anyway, recommended reading the Professor post, and staying sharply tuned.

Joining the Fair Copyright for Canada - Facebook group will allow you to stay in touch with what is happening as would be reading Michael's blog: www.michaelgeist.ca .

John McCain to speak in Canada: WTF

John McCain to speak in Canada per Yahoo Canada news

This is very disturbing to Northworthy, a Canadian by birth, adopted very quickly into the home of landed immigrant who refused to give up her US citizenship, paying annually her US taxes, when she could have taken the easy way out: become Canadian.

In such a household, one gets some rather unique views, including what a President should or not do, to be "Presidential."

The candidates were always closely scrutinized, the conventions watched, and the absentee ballot cast.

Mr. McCain has made a very poor decision to come to Canada to campaign, that is what my mother would have said.

Worse, she would have been outraged, in a way one cannot express in a public blog.

She would also question "Canucks" for having acquiesced to such an event, the first time in Canada's history.

The banter would have been intolerable for a patriotic Canadian type, and you know who would have been in what room, stuck there, if this occurred during my youth.

The question of my country being a country would have been asked, and answer fast with "you don't have a country when you allow foreign leaders to make campaign speeches to electoral eunuchs."

So that raises the question: what is McCain up to? Is he trying to win us over for what?

The "Amero," the rumoured common currency zone between Canada, the US and Mexico, and in essence Euro-fy Canada?

To that, one wonders about the French Canadien position that barely few Canadians understand: to me this will be the final straw to break the camels back if we Euro-fy (recall France did not vote in favour of the European Union's Constitution, with the Dutch, and one other nation; the UK called off their vote on the matter as a result).

In another sense, when one looks at Canada, and the US, why would Canadians want to join with a nation that is reviled internationally at the political level for its militaristic stance on "protecting Americans" from threats that have recently been deceptions than real.

Further Canada has a healthy trade balance, our budget is in order, our government is pared to the bone, we have no enemies in the world (though that has changed very recently), we have a great health care system in practice that could be a lot better if the political Conservatives had chosen instead of paying down debt, making payments into our major health care needs due to Canada's demographics: we need much more research money i.e. university, facilities for people, and 'educational' money for getting staff for these facillities. Health was totally absent in the recent budget as part I guess of the continuing downloading of government services but with abundant catches, and unnecessary bureaucrasy for Health Canada to retain some power, that more often than not is not exercised to halt private clinics for example.

And presently, the only educational incentives are available to the well off, not the working family, middle class, who cannot spare much money (as the results show from tax expenditure analysis). A doctor's education is likely near $400,000 today, with the doctor stuck with what a $70,000 student loan: great incentive for smart middle class kids or smart recent immigrants who in the main have to go through some "fallow" working conditions in residency v. supporting their families.

So Canada has its problems but certainly fewer than the US, who appear to be on everyone's bulleye for trouble making, despite the folksy political fronts for its actual militarism, some would classify as imperialistic: why do the oil fields of Iraq become a National Security Issue for the US?

This indicates a hegemony and it is not like the Chinese, Indians, Russians, and the Muslim world are not watching this and knowing it first hand by experience. Russian bombers are back in the air now, on nuclear patrol, while the US Air Force Command has been replaced by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates for lax handling and procedures with respect to nuclear weapons, part of the former military "triad" of defense. When an element of your "triad" is confused, well, what kind of danger does that put the world in?

When we add to the nexus Israel threatening to take out the Iranian "Revolutionary Council's" nuclear program, it is not surprising due to geo-politics that the price of oil is what it is.

To me its laughable to blame it on financial speculators (Liberal Dan McTague who reads the closing spot market price and then applies a math function to that price to "magically" predict the price of gas tomorrow, yet blames the financial speculators: how about the forward purchasers Dan, like the oil companies themselves?) when the risk premium is immense, that the area known as the Middle East, an area with approx 30% of proven reserves, is between Tel Aviv and Tehran.

Today we read the inevitable: the Saudi's are worried that "we" will dump oil as a source of energy with the price this high, and they will be stuck with oil in the middle of a dessert they cannot sell. Anyone starting to cry for them?

The latter is not a problem from a Canadian's point of view as if all the oil was extracted that could be extracted from this planet, we indeed would be a snowball shortly, in our lifetimes if you are less than 50 years old.

Snowball?

Yes, that is when the planet's ice cap grows to counter balance the CO2 emissions as the impacts on ocean current's cause further damage to the climate and crops that feed billions of people, and we are left as a planet with a small barely liveable area near the equator, if we are lucky.

So as crazy as this sounds, I hope oil goes to $200 a barrel or $300 a barrel so that we, particularly in North American can get on with the shifts to energy independence that President Jimmy Carter outlined in the late 70's, that the Reagan Administration threw out.

[Factoid: Germany is the leading nation is generating electrical power from wind in the world: 22,000 Megawatts. I ask why Canada could not have done more on those lines than strip land of its soil, waste clean water and tons of energy, to create oil out of tar sand, so the US can drive big cars, that only the rich in the near future will be able to afford]

So yes, US citizen John McCain, come on up to Canada. I think we want to listen very carefully on what your plan is against the Snowball we face if we don't get cracking on a carbon emissions trading system like ... yesterday!

Visitors flocking to see 'unicorn' deer

Visitors flocking to see 'unicorn' deer

Ok the world is a bit awry now.

Now this deer in Tuscany, Italy.

It has one horn which is rare but not unheard of, but this little deer has it smack dab in the middle, like a Unicorn!

Follow the link to see maybe a real live Unicorn.