As soon as the money comes in, it goes out. I've had enough repayment over the last month to be able to cover another $25 loan to someone in the developing world that needs a helping hand. This time around, I just chose the first person on the list, when I clicked on lend on the Kiva site. Usually, I sort the loan applicants by region and gender, giving to women in Africa. This time around, a woman in Juba, South Sudan, was at the top of the list, and saved me the sorting effort.
Agnes, to whom my $25 loan went to, is a mom with three kids and a husband, who is a soldier. She is looking to grow her charcoal selling business, with the hopes of using the additional profits to build a house. The loan is facilitated by BRAC, an NGO based in Bangladesh, operates a microfinance program in South Sudan, focusing on war refugees -- and already has 418 village organizations with more than 14,000 women members.
The $25 loan is a drop in the bucket of world's needs, but even while that bucket continues to grow larger to accommodate the increasing number of needy, I'm ever the optimist that my drop precipitates a torrent that will eventually cause that bucket to overflow. You can be a part of it. $25 is all it takes to start, and the money is only a loan. It's not a donation. You loan it, it's repaid, and you have the option of re-loaning it again -- and again, and again. Like I have. Currently, I have five loans in various stages of repayment -- and five that has already been repaid fully. Not a whole lot for sure, but they represent effort in the right direction.
"“The face of poverty is female,” she said, sketching the portrait of the typical poor African youth.“She is 18.5 years old. She lives in a rural area. She has dropped out of school. She is single, but is about to be married or be given in marriage to a man approximately twice her age. She will be the mother of six or seven kids in another 20 years,” said Ezekwesili, citing the findings of the latest edition of the annual World Bank publication, Africa Development Indicators (ADI)."
- Africa - In Africa, 'Poverty Has a Female Face' (view on Google Sidewiki)
McGuinty is playing politics. Right now, the public is rightly pissed at TTC workers, especially after the can of sleeping worms opened up simmering issues with how TTC workers treat their constituents. That is the only reason McGuinty wants to beat on already reeling TTC workers. No McGuinty, this is not a good time for a public debate on the issue of making TTC workers essential to the running of the city. Emotions would get in the way of any debate.
On the issue of the TTC being an essential service, I would have to disagree. I am a TTC user. Without the TTC, I would not get to work. I don't have a car. The one hour TTC commute would turn to hell. I would have to car pool; beg for a lift; or work from home. All options I'm willing to take if necessary, but would rather the TTC employees (not union) and the TTC management, settle labour issues by negotiation -- not strike. If it comes to a strike however, it is labour's right to have that choice. And unlike the police and emergency workers, the TTC is not essential. TTC employees are not essential to public safety. They do not ensure justice is served. They are not the ones to be called on to ferry the infirm to the hospital. They are a convenience. And we need to differentiate between convenience and essential. Torontonians, you don't know how good you have it, even with unreliability, service disruptions and snoring.
It's never too late to be late, and the Saudis are way fucking late. But it's all part of a plan. King Abdullah is trying to move his diseased society forward, one tiny step, without being lynched by one crazy mullah or the other. The plan has been afoot to allow women lawyers to argue some cases in court -- for the first time -- for a few years now. Of course, before we get all emotional over this announcement, we shouldn't forget that the women are educated in the Shariah justice system. (And yes, I realized that I'm being moronic with that sentence. Add a little bit of oxy if you don't get it.)
in reference to: BBC News - Saudi women to be allowed to argue cases in court (view on Google Sidewiki)
It's not socially acceptable to do it, but sometimes at work, I really feel like taking a nap. It's usually right after lunch. I could just crawl up quietly under my desk and snore for a bit. There has been lots of studies that have shown a little nap time would give a performance boost afterward. The latest from Berkeley suggests that a 90-min nap during the day is good for cognitive performance. A nap allows the brain to empty the hippocampus of short-term memories to the pre-frontal cortex for long-term storage. That emptying, allows you to accept additional short-term memories later in the day, to then commit them to memory at night.
in reference to:"Dr Matthew Walker, who led the study, reported at the AAAS conference in San Diego, said: "Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap."
- BBC News - Nap 'boosts' brain learning power (view on Google Sidewiki)
Google loaded $2M in cash into the tubes, and sent it over to Wikimedia, the nonprofit that oversees Wikipedia. The donation, which matches the donation from Pierre Omidyar's from six months ago, will go the distance to ensuring Wikipedia will continue to hum along in 2010. Despite the recession, people have apparently been loosening the purse strings and sending cash Wikimedia's way. Over 240,000 have given so far this fiscal year (July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010).
While we're on the subject of giving, another worthwhile organization to give to, is the Sunshine Press -- the nonprofit that is the custodian of Wikileaks -- the organization that specializes in shining the light in darkest recesses of censorship around the world. Wikileaks provides a forum for whistle blowers to get classified, censored and otherwise lost truths, into the open. Wikileaks has been attacked by many governments, including those of the free, democratically elected type. In response, Wikileaks is distributed, making a complete take down of the site, very, very hard. Sunshine Press has an annual budget of $600,000 -- and so far, they only have half of that raised to fund their operations in 2010.
"But the worst recession since World War II evidently didn't dampen support for the Internet's most popular encyclopedia, which has more than 14 million entries written and edited by some 100,000 unpaid contributors in about 270 languages."
- The Associated Press: Google donates $2 million to support Wikipedia (view on Google Sidewiki)
These assholes should all be arrested and thrown in jail. Oh, I don't know ... since we're living in a world that likes terrorism, how about arraigning them all on domestic terrorism charges?
That's for the assholes, aka, anarchists, or whatever they wish to call themselves. They have no point. They are simply there to cause chaos, wearing their fashionable made in China black clothing. They're not anarchists. They wouldn't know the first thing about anarchy.
""The demonstration involving a number of anarchists, some of whom dress all in black and employ a tactic called Black Bloc. This included a loosely organized group of thugs from Central Canada known to attach themselves to any cause, travel to any event that attracts media coverage and promote anarchy wherever they go," said a statement issued by police."
- CBC News - British Columbia - Anti-Olympics rioters smash Vancouver store windows (view on Google Sidewiki)
I'm watching the opening ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. I usually don't go for this kind of stuff -- but hey, it's happening in Canada. And I have to say, it's quite a show we're putting on for the world. For some of the world, this may form some opinions of our country -- or what we may want them to think of us, regardless of the realities. Some of it may very well be a little bit of propaganda to inspire a little bit of nationalism -- which wouldn't be such a bad thing, either. We are a great country of 33 million.
I was surprised by the amount of homage paid to the First Nations people -- considering the amount of protests that followed the flame around the country -- including during the opening ceremony. The homage was great to see. Made me proud to see the First Nations people welcome the world's atheletes to Canada -- to their lands -- and it was especially nice to see that the First Nations leaders were treated the same as other heads of states -- and sat in the same VIP seats occupied by Harper and other world leaders.
Of course, after the Olympics, things will go back to normal -- but maybe -- maybe, there will be just a little change left behind permanently.
"The status arrangement is part of a long-standing multiparty agreement signed by civic, provincial, federal, aboriginal and local Olympic officials ahead of Vancouver's successful bid to stage the 2010 Winter Games. In return for their support, the Four Host First Nations became equal Olympic partners, an unprecedented standing at the Games for aboriginal representatives."
- News | About Vancouver | Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games | CTV Olympics (view on Google Sidewiki)
MilkyWay@Home, the distributed computing project using the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform, is now the fastest computing project on that platform -- and probably the second fastest public distributed computing program, behind Folding@Home. MilkyWay@Home, using volunteer computing power from home users across the planet, has achieved 1,382 TFlops, as of January 12. Just for context -- that's just behind Jaguar, the Cray XT5 supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, that has performed at 1,759 TFlops and uses 224,162 Opteron cores -- compared to the 45 thousand users volunteering on MilkyWay@Home.
For more on the MilkyWay@Home project, click here.
Today, Google unveiled a lot of Canada to the world. Street View went live with 130 additional cities and towns across Canada, on Google Maps. Now, you can plan your road trip across Canada from the comfort of your home computer! And special, just for Vancouver 2010, Google also took the slopes. Can't make it to the Olympics? You can now surf the slopes! How awesome is that?
in reference to:"The 360-degree, slope-level imagery of Whistler Mountain is the first collected by the newest experimental Street View system, a snowmobile equipped with state-of-the-art photographic and GPS technology. Winter Games fans, skiers and snowboarders around the world can now pan across several Whistler runs as if they were there, and wind through Whistler Village and Whistler Creekside at the bases of Whistler-Blackcomb mountains."
- Announcement / Nouveauté (Google Street View Canada) (view on Google Sidewiki)
Six million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis between 1945-46. Six million people. And after the second world war, we, the world, vowed we would never let it happen again. As of the 2007 survey of the conflict in the Congo, since 1998, 5.4 million people had been killed. At a rate of 45,000 a month, the deaths have now surpassed the 6 million Jews from the second world war, and still, the world shows little interest in putting an end to it.
As horrific as the numbers are, the horrors don't end there. Slaughter doesn't even begin to describe what the women are being put through in the Congo. Rape doesn't describe the horror. Words fail to describe the horror being inflicted, repeatedly, on little girls, teens and women. Congo is especially noted for a conflict where war is waged on women -- on daughters, sisters and mothers. And we do nothing about it. What does that say about the rest of us?
“It was not uncommon to hear accounts of armed groups seizing young women from farms or water points and enslaving them and raping them for one to three months,” says Mosely. “Now women in North Kivu talk to me more about gunmen breaking into their homes and brutally raping them in front of their families.”
She says the attacks have become so frequent that families in the north cross into Uganda at night to sleep in the forest. It’s safer than staying at home.
“What’s happening in North Kivu is part of a larger epidemic of violence against women in Congo—extremely violent rape on a wide scale that is used to terrorize communities and humiliate families in a very calculated way.”
Source: With Worsening Violence Comes Staggering Reports of Rape, October 2007.
What is up with the TTC union and (some of) the staffers? Apparently, TTC workers, while not being encouraged -- but certainly not discouraged -- by their union, are thinking of a work-to-rule campaign in response to patrons being pissed at the disservice they've been getting (all prompted by the sleeping TTC worker photo). Are these people so clueless that they're not figuring it out? You don't piss off your customers. We, the riders of the TTC trains and buses, are the reason you go to work. We're the reason you get paid. We're the pockets that fund it all. This is a case of the pissed off staffers taking the public for granted. We're not here to serve you -- it's the other way around!
I've met some of these TTC workers. You're the lady in the booth that was anything but helpful when I tried buy tokens from you. I'm sorry, I was out of the country in December -- when I came back, I had forgotten that tokens were not for sale yet, and only tickets were being sold. If I was regularly using the TTC through December, I would have remembered this. In other words, I was no different than an infrequent TTC rider -- or one who had never used the TTC before. Your response of, "No tokens" was not helpful. When I realized, and asked for tickets, your next response of, "Sure," without moving from the riveting article you were reading in the newspaper, was equally unhelpful. You continued with this attitude and dragged out what should have been a short and pleasant experience, into one that was long and painful. Why? Why does the TTC allow a driver who swings from one mood to another to drive their buses? He sometimes take the 25 route. The jerk embarrasses people. He's yelled on patrons every time I've been on the bus he's driving. I've even heard him commenting, "Learn to speak the language if you're going to come to this country." WTF?
The assholes who work for the TTC -- and yes, there are many of them -- put the good TTC workers -- and thankfully, they outnumber the assholes -- to shame. They are a disservice to the good TTC workers who ply their routes day-in and day-out, putting up with irate passengers and "13 and 14-year-olds that feel that they have an entitlement," with a constant smile and a positive attitude. Those drivers, ticket agents and other personnel, work hard to make the TTC a good public service. But the assholes take it away instantly. The union should be representing the staffers with great customer service, as well. They should not defend the assholes. You defend the assholes, and you put the public in a position to label all workers bad. We don't want to do that. And you shouldn't want us to do that. If you want us to defend you, then stand up and say that the assholes who give bad service and abuse the public, shouldn't count on the union to back them up. When you don't do that, you make yourself no different from them -- you're just another asshole that the public needs to contend with.
The UN Population Fund has published their latest report, State of World Population 2009. The authors are focused in this report on the impact of climate change on the human population. As I have argued in previous posts, climate change is no longer a question. It is happening and it is due to human activities. The rapid change is inevitable. The uncertainty now is on the impact to the human population and the environment.
History has lessons for us on how we will deal with the inevitable change. It doesn't need to be a disaster, like a tsunami or a hurricane or an earthquake -- though disasters like that will occur as a result -- it can subtle -- like changing weather patterns that bring floods or droughts. Just small changes that doesn't necessarily punch an immediate hole in our day-to-day should be reflected on, to forecast what's coming.
When subtle change comes, we the rich, will be able to cope. We the rich will have choices. We are much more capable of adaptation than the poor. We, the rich world, that shoulder much more of the blame for the change in the climate, will be the ones who will be relatively OK. The poor will suffer. And the poorest of the poor that will take the brunt of the suffering, will be women and girls.
Women and girls remain the poorest of the poor in the world. They are less educated, less mobile and have less choices than men. In families, they carry the burden of child rearing and ensuring there is food to feed the hungry mouths. As food prices increase due to climate change, women will face the burden of bringing in additional income. In developing responses to climate change, policy makers will need to specifically address differences in impacts on men and women.
"Gender refers to the differences in socially constructed roles and opportunities associated with being a man or a woman and the interactions and social relations between men and women. Gender is not only about women. Policies that aim to address any aspect of climate change will be less effective if they fail to take into account the differences between men, women, boys and girls. Gender-blind policies may exacerbate the problems associated with climate change by widening inequalities between sexes. Special attention may be required to compensate for inequalities that women currently face.
Given women's significant engagement in food production and preparation and the potential for land use to contribute to climate-change solutions in developing countries, the close connection between gender, farming and climate change deserves far more analysis than it currently receives. Because of greater poverty, lesser power over their own lives, less recognition of their economic productivity and their disproportionate burden in reproduction and child-raising, women face additional challenges as climate changes. The recent experiences of natural disasters -- some logically related to climate change, others clearly not -- indicate that women are more likley to lose their lives and otherwise fare worse than men in extreme events from heat waves to hurricanes and tsunamis."
The GEO600 may have inadvertently discovered that "we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram." That, according to Craig Hogan, the director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics.
GEO600 is a gravity wave detector in Germany hasn't had much success in finding gravitational waves -- but it has been having a lot of problems with noise -- noise that Craig Hogan may have independently predicted. Hogan thinks that the noise GEO600 has detected can be explained as microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time -- which is the limit of the space-time continuum described by Einstein.
The physics behind the suggestion that the universe may be a holographic image is complex, to say the least. However, it's exactly what you think. The suggestion is that the universe is like a 3-dimensional holographic projection from a 2-dimensional surface. The suggestion comes from theoretical work done on black holes, to explain the black hole information paradox -- and supported by some string theory work.
It is very early to say the noise that GEO600 is experiencing is evidence for a holographic universe, but the idea is intriguing. It makes my head spin just thinking about it.
Only idiots would now argue whether there is change in the Arctic or not -- and apparently, idiots abound -- but this post is not about them. Change is happening. Climate change is here -- has been here. The only question is, what will the result be. Science can only be speculative with its forecasts. The models just aren't good enough because of the number of variables. We don't know for sure what will result from the great melt -- but the great melt is happening and we're not going to be ready for it. There will be economic impacts. There will be social impacts. And there will be a whole lot of environmental impacts. Some of these we will be able to cope with, some we will lament, and some we will grin and bear arms to deal with.
If history is any indicator -- and it is a damn good indicator -- we will lose more than we will gain from this change. We will be unresponsive until it's too late, in the unending hope that certain disasters would be averted by our sheer willing them not to happen.
For more, see here.
"Barber compared the impact of losing sea ice in the Arctic to the loss of trees in a tropical rain forest. The Arctic sea ice isn't just a cap on top of the ocean, Barber said. "The sea ice breathes," he said. "It pumps carbon dioxide in and out." The researchers also found pollutants in the sea ice. "The Arctic is not as pristine as you would like to think it is. It's actually a dumping ground for a lot of contaminants," he said."
- CBC News - North - Arctic ice melting faster than feared: study (view on Google Sidewiki)
China is apparently succumbing to pressure from its affluent middle class to stop eating dogs and cats. Which I suppose is a good thing. As a pet owner, I'd much rather not eat my cat -- or have anyone else eat her for that matter. But why the taboo? Yes, pet owners do come to regard their pets as part of their families -- akin to having children -- but why just dogs and cats? There are people who keep pigs, cows, horses, etc., yet we don't seem to have the emotional reaction to their consumption -- either by us or in the meat that feed our beloved dogs and cats.
I think the taboo is silly, but also think our general consumption of meat needs to be rethought. Generally, we're ravenous when it comes to meat -- vegetarians excepted. There is a huge environmental cost to its consumption, and the taking of a life, regardless of whether it was raised specifically for that purpose, is done without a second thought. There is little respect or thanks given for the life that is taken to feed our needs -- our wants.
I'm guilty as well. It's easy to not wonder about it when the killing is done for us, far away from our homes and the meat is packaged clinically and sold in boutique environment. Like everything else we shop for at the grocery store, we never wonder where it came from, and never wonder if there was pain and suffering involved -- or if any thanks was every given.
I was recently told of a friend's daughter who asked if the cow slaughtered for the dinner table was afraid as it was led to its end. We exercise our imagination so little. Yes, yes, the cow that is your steak was afraid. Just imagine what your dog or cat would feel if you led it through a slaughter house for dogs and cats.
Not content with their war in the US, the American Christian right is now taking it's hate to Africa.
Earlier in 2009, Scott Lively, at the invitation of Uganda's Family Life Network, descended on the African nation to bring the word of hate. Lively, told Ugandans who attended his "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexuals' Agenda" of how American homosexuals were actively recruiting young Ugandans into their movement. He claimed that homosexuality directly increased the divorce rate, child abuse & molestation and HIV/AIDS. The Ugandans attending his seminar, ate it up.
Lively went on to meet with Ugandan lawmakers and government officials. The fruits of his labour became the Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2009. The act, which was proposed in October 2009, would ban LGBT organizations and introduces the death penalty for homosexuality.
American evangelicals have been actively involved in Africa in recent years, as the importance of Africa to Christianity has grown. Africa is becoming the new battleground for the conservative-religious right. They are targeting a widely ignorant population that is ready jump head first into hysteria. Easy prey is what they've found and the erosion of human rights is harder to combat in a continent plagued with problems.
Read the Ugandan hate bill here.
IBM has created graphene transistors in the lab that operate at 100 GHz. That's 10 faster than today's fastest silcon transistors. Made from sheets of carbon just an atom-thick, the graphene transistors can be produced using existing semiconductor manufacturing processes.
How awesome would it be to have one of those humming away in your home computer? Just wait a few more years, they're coming.
Harper continues to do his best to ensure Parliament knows he really doesn't give a shit what they think. Like Bush, Harper thinks the executive branch of government is above the law of the land -- and can interpret the constitution at its whim.
I hope for the next election, we get some real choices. I hope that voters actually turn out to vote. And I hope we dismiss Harper and his band of yes-men.
""The executive is really placing itself above Parliament. For the first time that I know in Canadian history, the executive is saying we are superior to Parliament," said Errol Mendes, a University of Ottawa professor who was speaking at an informal hearing of the parliamentary committee looking into the Afghanistan detainee issue. Mendes was referring to the Harper government's refusal to hand over uncensored documents, despite a motion passed in the House of Commons to do so."
- CBC News - Canada - Harper government violating Constitution: prof (view on Google Sidewiki)
You may have heard the news about Colorado Springs, CO. It's a beautiful city sitting on the foot of the Rocky Mountains -- and it's about to get very ugly. The city is broke. It's not bringing in the tax revenues it needs to run the business of being a city. It's cutting firefighters and cops, and slowing down city services, such as trash collection, parks maintenance and public transport. Heck, it's even put its police helicopters on sale on the Internet.
Colorado Springs' problem isn't unique. Across the US, towns, cities and states are running into serious fiscal problems. For years, they've spent. For years, they've accumulated debt. And for years, unions representing city workers, have bargained hard, then gone on strike and bargained hard, again. They've got it so good, they're bilking the general population. City workers have it much better than the general population -- and have much less risks to their jobs, pay and pensions. When there is such an imbalance, it's only a matter of time before things start falling apart.
For Colorado Springs, that may be about to happen.
"COLORADO SPRINGS"
- Colorado Springs cuts into services considered basic by many - The Denver Post (view on Google Sidewiki)
China can't seem to get any slack these days. The latest comes from Britain's MI5, which has accused China of some pretty nefarious practices to cull secrets from British firms and government. In the report, the Threat from Chinese Espionage, circulated to business and government leaders in the UK, MI5 warns that vigilance is needed, as well as government-security intervention to thwart the Chinese threat.
Apparently, there have been Chinese electronic attacks on Britain's defense, energy, communications and manufacturing companies, as well as the government. As well, there has been cases of sexual entrapment and espionage involving electronic gifts and bugged hotel rooms.
None of this is entirely new of course. China regularly spies on foreign governments. And so do western governments spy on China. What's alarming however, is China is also spying on businesses. Some will argue, especially the Chinese government, that they are innocent of any espionage against western businesses. Why would they want to, when western businesses are tripping over themselves to get into China? That is hardly a rebuttal of the accusations however. Chinese industry is hungry for western know-how. Western companies are hesitant in sharing. Why give away the gold mine?
It doesn't help China that its most successful of businesses are so tied to the communist party and the government. It's impossible to be successful in China without greasing the communist wheel. Where does the line get drawn then, between the government and the industries that are in the palm of its hands?
In the western democracies, this problem is compounded by the fact that we live in relatively open societies. We make it easy by leaving the door open. It is the very nature of our society. To close our doors is to change what we are. So they won't close -- and they shouldn't -- but some vigilance is surely called for. And, from China, the world should expect more. To join the ranks of respected nations that are stewards of a globally integrated economy and to foster dialogue instead of a call to arms, China needs to have a clear separation of political and business interests. China needs to champion a shared justice, and not just their unique brand of repression. If the Chinese government did not sponsor the attacks on western businesses, it needs to demonstrate it can do something about the perpetrators acting in its name. Even if it's a scapegoat -- though I trust a government that keeps such a closed fist on its people must know who the true culprits are.
"The Threat from Chinese Espionag"
- China bugs and burgles Britain - Times Online (view on Google Sidewiki)
