A COUPLE OF THINGS YOU DON'T NEED, BUT ARE IMPRESSIVE

SomeThings You DO NOT NEED

1) The Steampunk motorcycle comes with firing machine guns (blanks only).

      Great to impress your "anarchist friends".

2) The all-new Toroidion  is the world's most powerful all-electric supercar with a full megawatt (1,341 hp) of power.
     To compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race of some 3,000 miles (4,830 km),  Toroidion relies on a rapid-swap high-capacity battery that is "as easily replaced in the pit-lane as it is in the home garage."  Distances like that are over 10 times the range of other electric cars like the Tesla Model S and Audi R8 e-tron.

Some Useful Things You MIGHT USE

1) Add Wi-Fi  connection to your old computer using a USB dongle available from Amazon.com (under $20).  It is just a tiny little dongle that you plug into a USB port. It has a Wi-Fi radio in it, which your computer can use it to connect to Wi-Fi.

2) Want easy Bluetooth for your old computer with USB dongle?  The HTG Guide to Adding Bluetooth to Your Computer

What You SHOULD KNOW

1)  USA CALLS FOR AN END TO PSYCHIATRIC THERAPIES TO CHANGE SEXUAL ORIENTATION (ALSO CALLED "CONVERSION THERAPY).

     President Barack Obama has called for an end to psychiatric therapy treatments seeking to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of gay, lesbian and transgender youth. It comes in response to a petition.

2) Tuesday, April 21, 2015, The Canadian government has indicated it will present a BALANCED  BUDGET (NO YEARLY DEFICIT). Somehow, no one seems concerned that, although this means we will have stopped rushing further into DEBT, we still have a RECORD HIGH DEBT.  As in,   C$ 981,464,208,804  at the time I write this blog and increasing by about $1000 per second. Click to see the DEBT clock. 
      It is like just borrowing more money from the bank to "balance" your household budget SO YOU CAN KEEP ON SPENDING.  I guess this is why the Government NEVER says the word "debt".
      Think about this when you are told how well Canada is doing economically.

   

Pot Festival

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HOW CHANGE HAPPENS (or doesn't happen)

Preamble 
     During my some four decades working in  the educational system in Manitoba I have often wondered how major changes in teaching methods and philosophy kept suddenly happening . For example, in teaching reading the swing to and away from various methodologies ("sight word",  phonics , "whole language", etc) occurred on a 10 year cycle. Now I realize that I understand how very few of the major changes in the world come about.

      I do know how VHS succeeded over the cheaper and technically superior BETA format, but I am not telling you.
      I have also been bewildered as to how obvious changes do not seem to happen. For example, financial institutes do not seem to notice that the order of digits in dates can be confusing.  Unless you know the format used by the institution, 01/12/10 can be either Jan 12 or Dec 1 (assuming most institutions always have the year last). There has recently been a move by the printers of cheque blanks to take initiative by indicating "20yy/mm/dd" on each cheque. So much for the idea that the year is always the last two digits, but it is a set toward consistency and it does make sense.

      Another widespread annoyance is the confusion between a capital "O" and the numeral zero "0". The use of a slashed zero (Ø) actually existed in the 12th century and was in common on the very early home computers and printers.  It even exists on your own computer (use ALT 0216 on keypad).  Why isn't it shown on the modern keyboards and used? 
     Have you ever had an airline reservation number or software code like "M10Qbl0"? The letter "l" and numeral "1" and "V" and "U" are also confusing depending on the font. Have you noticed telephone operators refer to an number like "401" as four-oh-one" even though "oh" is number 6 on the keypad?


The Metric System in Canada
    Up until a few weeks ago when I was researching for his blog I thought that Napoleon made France officially metric in 1840 by saying something like: I am the emperor and we will now change to the metric system. It appears that in fact he had less trouble in implementing the Napoleonic Code than he had with getting acceptance for the metric system (maybe because he voted against it once), but it did happen.
    In 1971 the Canadian government appointed the Metric Commission Canada with a mandate of implementing metric measurements in every aspect of national life by 1980. Metric measurements were to be required (usually with imperial measurement subtitles) in an increasing number of goods. The conversion process was well under way until the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney brought it to an abrupt halt by abolishing the commission in 1985. Many regulations requiring metric measurements were either repealed or no longer enforced. As a result, we Canadians today use a confusing and inefficient mix of metric and imperial measurements with no hope of a single system being developed.
     As Grampa of the Simpsons show said: "Metric is the work of the devil! My car gets 82 rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it! " If you work out the conversion to miles per gallon (either Canadian or US), you will see he has a very inefficient car.

The Ozone Layer Study (an example of how something happened and is now being killed)

     The year 1957-58 was designated by the scientific community as the International Geophysical Year. A worldwide network of observation centres was set up to measure the thickness of the ozone layer, based on the inference that the heating of the stratosphere was caused by the absorption of ultraviolet solar radiation by ozone. 

     As luck would have it, I was hired as a relief person in Moosonee, Ontario at one of Canada's newly established Dobson Spectrophotometer observation stations as part of its contribution to the ozone layer study which is still going on.  For my personal experience there see pages 97-102  of my autobiographical stories, “It’s Not Where You’re Going”. 

     In 1979, after much resistance from industry interests, the US, Canada, and Norway banned CFC-containing aerosol cans in 1979. But when scientists discovered an ozone hole over Antarctica in the mid-1980s, countries around the world began phasing out the ozone-destroying chemicals. A new class of ozone-friendly molecules called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) replaced them. This just one of the benefits to the world of this type of research which has been going on for some 54 years with Canada as one of the original and continuing contributors. BTW - if you have been reading the recent spate of arguments against even the existence of the ozone layer you might like to check some referenced information on a few of the recent myths.

    It is now 2011, and Canada will be discontinuing its contribution to the environment. This will happen with no discussion - not even a statement that it will happen - or how it happened.  It will be done by simply laying off staff at Environment Canada. The only way to find the deliberate sabotage of this ozone research project is to read between the lines of the fine print in the 2011-12 Budget.

  

     I guess that is how some changes happen in our Canada these days.