Archive for the ‘Rampant Consumerism’ Category
December 22nd, 2009 | 
Author: This is quite long, so I’m going to break it into a few pieces. :-0
November was a pretty strange month around here. The first time in more than 90 years that Toronto hasn’t had any snow. When we planned this family jaunt to Florida, we had no idea what to expect for weather here. Down there, it’s pretty unsettled this time of year, but we were hoping that we could at least have a bit of snow to gloat about. Mother Nature didn’t disappoint and gave us about 10cm the day before we left. This was the view on the morning of December 8 as we loaded into the van:
Nice, isn’t it? The problem for folks back here was another 15 or so that cam the day after we left. Two co-workers were kind enough to express their thoughts on my being in Florida while they stayed here and if I had checked my work email while I was away, this was waiting: Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in 
OK, enough’s enough:
- Vancouver police purchase a sound weapon, claiming that they only want to use it as a “loudspeaker”
- Assorted Vancouver-area municipalities pass by-laws allowing the cops to barge into private homes and remove protest signs from windows
- Now, Canada Customs is screening visitors to the country on their views of the Owelympics:
(CBC’s) As It Happens radio show covers the story of Amy Goodman’s recent’ border crossing into Canada. Goodman — host of the US public radio show Democracy Now! — was coming to Canada to give a speech at a library, and Canadian border guards questioned her intensely about the subject of her talk, even reading her notes for her speech. They were fishing for something, but Goodman couldn’t figure out what, until the guards asked her outright whether she was planning on talking about the upcoming Canadian Olympic Games. When she assured them that she hadn’t been, they eventually released her (it had been a 75 minute detention) but stamped a control-order in her passport giving her only 24 hours’ stay in Canada.
This is un-fucking-acceptable, people! Canadians have long prided ourselves on living in a free and open democracy. But now, the border guards have been tasked with keeping out those dangerous people that talk?
This just in: my employer is broke.
Queen’s University is still in dire financial straits, and the picture is not getting any better.
In his third update on the economic situation of the school — the last one before handing over the reins of the school to incoming principal Daniel Woolf this summer — principal Tom Williams said layoffs are an option unless costs can be reduced.
“I regret to say that I see nothing that would suggest the tough times we have been experiencing over the past year will improve,” Williams told a standing-room-only crowd in the conference room of the Policy Studies building yesterday afternoon.
I have been assuming that the IT guy (me) would turn the lights out behind him on the way out the door. Now, I wonder how safe that assumption actually is.
There’s an interesting article about product labelling in the Toronto Star this morning:
The labels on 98 per cent of those good-for-the-earth-and-your-body items you fill your shopping basket with are lying, a new study shows.
Of the more than 2,000 self-described environmentally friendly products in North America examined by the environmental marketing firm TerraChoice, only 25 were found to be indisputably “sin free.” The rest were greenwashing, a term environmentalists coined to refer to misleading environmental ads or claims.
I don’t know why anyone should be surprised by this. Folks are looking for less dangerous products to use at home and assuage their consciences about the impact we have on the planet. Having manufacturers lie about their products to gain a piece of this new market segment should have been a given. Read the rest of this entry »
File this under presumably well-meaning politicians trying to do something good and not properly evaluating teh consequences of their actions:
… under a law Congress passed last year aimed at regulating hazards in children’s products, the federal government has now advised that children’s books published before 1985 should not be considered safe and may in many cases be unlawful to sell or distribute. Merchants, thrift stores, and booksellers may be at risk if they sell older volumes, or even give them away, without first subjecting them to testing — at prohibitive expense.
The problem is the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008: it was passed last year during the consumer panic about lead in children’s toys, mainly coming from China. mong its other provisions, CPSIA imposed tough new limits on lead in any products intended for use by children aged 12 or under, and made those limits retroactive: that is, goods manufactured before the law passed cannot be sold on the used market (even in garage sales or on eBay) if they don’t conform.
Yep. Don’t sell that first edition of Where The Wild Things Are on eBay. It could wind up costing you $100k plus prison time and nobody has to be hurt for the charge to be laid.
Well, it’s 2009. I’m not going to bother with a year-end post. Bah. I’m going to look forward, instead: I turn 40 this year. A decade change in age can be a time for reflection and adjustment. Possibly change.
To that end, I’ve started keeping a journal. I doubt that I’ll write daily, but I will write regularly. It should be a great way for me to keep track of events and pay more attention to what’s happening and why. Slowing down.
Some things won’t change. My sense of humour (offbeat to say the least). My outlook on life and the world (let me off, please). My priorities in life. I’m going to try to pry myself away from the computer more. I’m going to try to take better care of myself: eat better, get more sleep, etc. I’m going to continue to post weird-ass stuff that I find online here. 
