JibJab Does McCain and Obama

The Bush/Kerry one was hilarious - this one is pretty good too.



Via Double Blind.

Cropsharing in Portland

Some crazy hippy* in Portland is running a collective farming operation with the food being grown in local backyards.

I discovered this on my last trip to Portland; much to my surprise, my grandparents' backyard had been converted to cropland (beans, I think).

It sounds like the arrangement details vary quite a bit, but I understand it often works something like this: farmer dude bikes over, creates garden, comes back periodically to maintain garden, and splits harvest with land owners and shareholders of the farming collective.

My first thought was that bringing back sharecropping (a fairly oppressive form of employment, as far as I can tell) to give power to the people was fairly ironic. But I suppose that in this particular mode it's a bit more free-enterprisey - you aren't dependent on any single landowner for your sustenance.

My second thought was that I like the idea of putting my own monster backyard to productive use without doing any work myself, but I am pretty paranoid about the possibility of toxins in the ground - I live pretty close to a highway (when was leaded gas banned?). The hippy in question has a feel-good answer about handling lead and miscellaneous "poisons", but I don't know enough chemistry to know he's correct...

Thanks for your question, Craig. I forwarded your question to Kollibri, who responds that he tests for lead in all his plots.

Also, he amends the soil so that the pH remains above 6.5. Even if there were poisons present in the soil, this would prevent their uptake into plants.

Anyway, pretty neat idea. Anyone doing this in the Lower Mainland of BC?

* I know crazy hippies. Trust me. Plus, his adopted name means "Hummingbird Earth Sunflower" and he was inspired to this task by the fact that sufferers of Hurricane Katrina were dependent on the outside world for food (underwater gardening, anyone?).

Movie Review: Get Smart

I haven't seen even a single episode of the old TV series by the same name, but I still enjoyed Get Smart.

Steve Carell is joined by The Rock, Terence Stamp, and the guy who plays Hiro on Heroes for this silly movie, which is punctuated by moments of side-splitting brilliance. There is the occasional parallel to real-live current events, but not much beyond some good-natured mocking of President Bush.

I recommend it if you're looking for a chuckle.

Carbon Emissions vs Consumption

It seems that I've confused "carbon emissions" with "carbon consumption" - probably because I care a little about the latter, and not at all about the former - resulting in a thoroughly sketchy claim that BC's new gas tax won't reduce carbon emissions. It's a lot harder to get out of the carbon consumption chain than the carbon emission chain.

Thanks to Sacha for only quoting the least crazy part of that post!

So, does this mean that the environmentally friendly choice at Safeway is plastic bags because it raises the price of gas? It's all so confusing these days...

That being said, I'm not going to take too much crap from anyone that extols both the economic and environmental benefits of this tax restructuring - if there's one thing that economic growth does not normally lead to, it's a reduction in carbon emissions.


See also this chart at Google's Gapminder.

The BC Carbon Tax is Retarded

Whoops! I was not thinking entirely clearly when I wrote this post. Proceed with caution!

Sitting in line for gas on the last day before BC's new Carbon Tax is imposed (hey, I was just unluckily low on gas, not hoarding!), I had some time to ponder the full impact of this legislation.

Absolutely nothing, that's what. Well, in an ideal, frictionless world there would be no impact - we can actually look forward to a small amount of productivity being lost in BC, with no decrease in carbon emissions.

If it was just a regular tax hike, it might result in more money being spent on greening our cities, or treeplanting, or another activity that will produce slightly less carbon than just going about life as normal.

But it's not a regular tax hike. In fact, the BC Liberals have gone out of their way to ensure this tax will absolutely 100% not decrease carbon emissions!

By law, government must show how all of the carbon tax revenue flows back to individuals and businesses as tax reductions.

That's right. They hired a bunch of people to define and administer a brand new tax, spent some more cash mailing one time rebates out, and the net result is the money gets shuffled around a bit. I'll take them at their word that the resulting tax cuts will distribute the revenue relatively fairly and that this tax isn't particularly regressive.

Let's restate things one more time to be really clear: A bunch of money is collected. The BC Government takes a small slice off the top to pay for the salaries of the people that administer the program (or other tax dollars have to be diverted for that purpose - same difference). Whatever is left is given back to the people that paid the tax to begin with so that they can afford to by more carbon based products. Oh, and all the companies that have to collect the tax raise their prices a tiny bit to compensate for the extra overhead.

In summary: No reduction in carbon emissions, fewer people in the province doing productive work, and prices effectively go a tiny bit up on everything we buy.

Good job, geniuses.

Freedom of Speech for the Rich and Influential

In the face of mounting public awareness and anger, the Canadian Human Rights Commission has decided not to prosecute Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine for publishing an article about Islam.

The downside is that this might remove some of the pressure to abolish the CHRC in its entirety, and those fascists will continue to oppress everyone that can't afford teams of lawyers.

The BC Human Rights Tribunal on the other hand did hold a show trial but has yet to pronounce guilt or innocence. Another bunch of leeches on society, those guys.

Via Ezra Levant.

Old Communist Jokes

David Frum is posting dozens of old jokes from the USSR; most of them are fairly undecipherable if you don't know the players involved, or simply don't translate well. Here are two exceptions:

A Frenchman, a Brit, and a Russian are admiring a painting of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. The Frenchman says, "they must be French, they're naked and they're eating fruit." The Englishman says, "clearly they're English. Observe how politely the man is offering the woman the fruit." The Russian notes, "they are Russian of course. They have nothing to wear, nothing to eat, and they think they are in paradise."

=================================

There was the Russian who bought a car and was told it would be delivered ten years from the purchase date. "Morning or afternoon?" he inquired. "What does it matter?" asked the salesman. "The plumber is coming in the morning."

I don't recall every hearing comparable jokes about the West... I think we spend more time picking on our leaders' personal foibles than the system we live in. Which is a nice luxury, frankly.

Movie Review: Mr. Brooks

It's always fun to see a fairly wholesome actor do a dark and nasty role; Costner's performance in Mr. Brooks is no exception. It is a testament to the creators' talents that they managed to make such a sympathetic serial killer that I found myself rooting for him before too long.

William Hurt is genius as Mr. Brooks' alter ego (he's not necessarily more evil, just weird in a different way). Their offside conversations - blended nicely with the things other people present are saying - are very entertaining.

It all ends on a pretty bizarre note as well, which seemed fitting given the rest of the movie. Very satisfying.