Reading List

A list of my recent reads, all highly recommended. In no particular order:

The Four Hour Work Week - a great book. Not about work, about not working and living life.

The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide - the author believes the US is heading into depression, and he provides some pretty compelling evidence.

The Party's Over - mostly about peak oil and what it means.

The World Without Us - interesting look at what we are doing to the planet and how it might, or might not, recover if we stopped.

Peak Everything - peak oil really does mean peak everything.

Plan B 3.0 Mobilizing to Save Civilization - the 21st century will be a fascinating read for future history buffs.

The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets - investing advice.

Crash Proof 2.0 - investing advice.

Power Down - what peak oil means (add global warming with a good helping of environmental degradation and you get the collapse of civilization).

Why Your World Is About To Get A Whole Lot Smaller - peak oil and economics. An important work but reads like it was written by an economist (a bit dry).

Nuclear Power is NOT the Solution

Thorium might be the solution, but uranium is not. Solution to what? The coming energy crisis, also known as Peak Oil. There is currently no substitute for oil for our energy-based economies. Some believe that uranium based nuclear power is a possible solution. It is not. 

The nuclear waste from uranium-based nuclear power is extremely dangerous for thousands of years. Even after decades of production there is still not even one long-term storage facility in the world. It is beyond immoral for us to expect countless future generations to deal with our nuclear waste. We can't assume that some technology will come to the rescue. Even if a storage facility is built we don't know if it will last (it probably won't).

Leave our nuclear waste for future generations to clean up? Leave millions of tons of poisons for future generations to deal with? How selfish. How evil.

Turn Alberta's Oil Sands Into Electricity

It is truly as shame what is happening in northern Alberta. Oil companies turn oil sands into oil, but only by using huge amounts of energy and water in the process. It takes the equivalent energy-input of one barrel for every three produced. What they are doing has been accurately called environmental Armageddon.

Canadians don't own the oil - foreign oil companies do. Their motivation is to make the most profit for themselves and that requires being able to ship the oil out of Canada. Alberta's environment is not their problem. 

If we want to get the most out of the oil sands a better use would be to produce electricity. If a steam-plant at the mill in Campbell River can turn saw dust into energy then it should be possible to do something similar with oil sands. It would no longer be necessary to extract the oil from the sand - just burn the sand directly to drive steam turbines to produce electricity. Electricity is much easier to transport than oil and the environmental damage would be lessened. There would still be emissions but they would be lower. The process would not require any water or natural gas inputs.

As long as the Canadian government keeps selling the oil sands to foreign oil companies don't expect the sands to be used for anything but oil, oil that will be shipped outside of Canada. Don't expect ordinary Canadians to benefit from this resource either - we will just be left with the mess when oil gets too expensive and the oil companies are long gone.

Conspiracy Theory

Conspiracy theorists have a bad reputation, possibly deserved. But one thing that can't be said about conspiracy books/documentaries. They can't be called boring. The mainstream (corporate) media and politicians hate conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists. What are they afraid of exactly?

It turns out a large part of "conspiracy theory" books and documentaries are about history. The history covered is often easily verified, but often not the typical stuff from our high-school history books. It is a history that makes corporations and politicians nervous, because history shows just what they are capable of and what they are capable of is pretty scary.

Just one example from history and this is not a conspiracy theory. The documentary 100,000 Radiations examines how the American military enlisted help from the Israeli Health Ministry for radiation testing in 1951. Children were given 35,000 times the allowable dose of x-rays in the head. 6000 of them died. [Maybe they should change their name to the Israeli Death Ministry.] This is not the type of history the military, corporations and politicians want people talking about. If the story had come out back then no one would have believed it. It would have been called a conspiracy theory and forgotten.

Surely our politicians and corporate leaders can't be that bad. Robert Hare, author of "Without Conscience" estimates 1% of the population to be just that: without a conscience. These are people who fight dirty and politics (including corporate politics) is a high stakes game without rules. And without rules the people who fight the dirtiest rise to the top.

Another part of most "conspiracy theory" books/documentaries consists of recent history in the form of news clips. Often the news clips are of "important" people like George W. Bush. The clips are often lengthy, unedited, clear and often quite damning.

The last part of your typical "conspiracy theory" book or documentary are the points the author(s) are attempting to convey. Some of it may sound reasonable and may be, while other parts not so much. But boring they are not.

Some "conspiracy theory" documentaries worth checking out:
- Zeitgeist I and II
- The Money Masters (puts the financial meltdown and the governments response into perspective)
- Hijacking Humanity 2
- Empire of the Ring, Ring of Power (this one is all over the map but absolutely fascinating) 
- Oh Canada, Our Bought And Sold Out Land
- Five Ring Circus

Cancel Your Cable/Satellite

A few years ago we decided to cancel our cable. We had lived in the States and had gotten used to paying $8 a month for basic cable. But we moved back to Canada and the cable companies here want $30 a month for basic cable. More than three times the cost and basic cable in Canada is not even as good as in the States.

We tried it for a while and finally asked ourselves: was the value we were getting worth it? Answer: no. But then we didn't upgrade, we simply canceled. 

That turned out to be the right thing to do, but for a reason we did not anticipate. Sure we don't miss the commercials and most of what is on TV is a total waste of time anyway. But we are now much better informed that when we watched TV - thanks to the Internet. 

After considerable effort searching the 'net for a good news source I came across Reddit.com and now it is one of my favorite sites of all time. Reddit provides pointers to other sites, providing a tremendous variety in points of view. Didn't know the last financial crisis was coming? Redditors knew, because they read the blogs that explained the problems and what was going to happen. It was just math.

After following the stories on Reddit the bullshit on the corporate, profit-oriented, elite-owned television news becomes clear. [Reading "Manufacturing Consent" helps.]

Television news almost does a good job. Almost. Intelligent people watch and think they are informed. The television news people want everyone to believe they are in the news business but they aren't, they are in the advertising business. Compare the corporate news to independent news (e.g. TheRealNews.com) and the difference becomes glaring. Independent news is honest and covers important news. Corporate news often omits or downplays important news. It is all about keeping the advertisers and the very political owners happy.

We don't miss our cable, the commericals, or the propaganda that comes with it. We got zip.ca instead (Canada's lame answer to NetFlix) so we can still watch movies (and any TV show worth watching comes out on DVD to). We have no plans to sign up for cable again - ever.

Why We Must Convert to Green Energy NOW

I just started reading "Peak Everything" an excellent book about our possible future (or lack thereof).

To help a person understand the amount of energy in a gallon of gasoline the book suggests this exercise: try pushing your car a few feet.  Now imagine the energy it would take to push your car about 20 miles (or the distance your car travels on a gallon of gas).  That gallon of gas contains an amazing amount of energy.  

Let's take things a bit further.  Think of a 380 ton dump truck at a mine, imagine pushing it. Not likely.  Without oil, all of our mines will become a tiny fraction as productive as they are now.  People who think nuclear power will save us consider uranium must be mined and at present rates uranium will run out in about 10 years.

Any non-violent transition to an oil-independent future will require a huge amount of: energy.  Windmills, solar panels, hydro-electric dams, wave-energy gizmos, geothermal: building them all on a large scale will require massive amounts of energy, metals and materials.

If we are smart we will build them now while we still have access to relatively cheap and amazingly-full-of-energy oil.  If we wait until oil becomes scarce and expensive what to you think will happen?

Global Warming and The United States of Hypocrisy

Conservative congressman, senators and individuals are saying "We are not going to cut our CO2 emissions unless everybody else does too".

The hypocrisy of such statements is absolutely unbelievable.  Americans are famous for their lack of knowledge of history and this is no exception. China may today emit more CO2 than the US but a very large percentage of the CO2 already in the atmosphere came from the United States in the first place. Global Warming would not exist if it were not the United States and their overconsumption of resources, especially their overconsumption of oil. America caused the problem but like a spoiled rotten little brat they are too selfish and immature to take the blame.

If other countries in the world had any balls at all they should form an economic boycott of the United States until the US accepts their responsibility to cleanup the mess they have created.

Open Letter to AARP Members and Old People Everywhere

Dear AARP Member,

If you look around the world you can see your legacy: pollution, overconsumption, overpopulation, greed, war, biodiversity collapse, religion, global warming, dumping your garbage in the oceans, the list goes on an on. As managers of the planet you should be ashamed of what you have achieved. Future generations, if there are any, will look back at your generations and curse your ignorance, your short-sightedness and your selfishness. Sure some of you are wonderful, knowledgeable people. But that is a tiny minority. 

It isn't entirely your fault, selfishness is a built-in human trait. And the mass media, such as Fox News, has done an amazing job of keeping you ignorant while at the same time making you think you are smart (you aren't). But with the emergence of independent media (e.g. TheRealNews.com) you don't have any excuses anymore. Either stop voting or take the time to really understand the issues. 

Please. Because currently you do more harm than good.

---

See also, a message for you Baby Boomers: The Shallowest Generation

Keyboard Shortcut: Shutdown Windows 7

I've been looking for a keyboard shortcut for shutting down Windows 7. Most of what I have found involves installing extra software. No thanks.

The solution is a sequence of keys: Windows-key, Tab, Tab, Enter.

Not as slick as the keys to lock the screen Windows-key/l (that is a lowercase L) but it works.