Late spring to early summer marks Dead Motorcyclist season. It’s the time of year when fatal encounters between motorcyclists and motorists are particularly apt to happen. Many bikers are seasonal riders. They put their machines away in the fall and over the winter and only get back on the road
Continue readingAuthor: The Mound of Sound
The Disaffected Lib: Volkswagen’s Too Cool Autostadt
If you live in certain parts of Europe, you can get a Volkswagen directly from the factory. Your car is built to order and then stored in one of these 60 metre/200 feet silos where it awaits your arrival to take delivery. Among other things you get your car with
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Coming Soon to Canada, "Fortress B.C."
The CBC’s Stephen Smart sees rough waters and rocky shoals ahead for Ottawa-B.C. relations after Tuesday’s provincial elections. Perhaps for the first time in his reign our eastern ruler may be confronted by a province spoiling for a fight. Most of the past dozen or so years can be seen
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Too Stupid for Satire?
Is political satire too risky for American consumption? Luke O’Neil argues in The New Republic that fake news has to go. Did you hear the one about the racist NRA president? You probably did if you’ve been on Facebook or Twitter in the last forty-eight hours. A widely shared article from the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: No Warts, No Boils – Yet
No boils. Not a wart to be seen. I was a little worried about what I might discover when I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning. Yesterday I voted NDP for the first time ever. For this guy. Now, in fairness, I didn’t have a lot of
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: "Untermensch" Enters the American Right’s Political Dialogue
The Heritage Institute – neo-conservative America’s premier think tank – is warning Americans that Hispanics are way too intellectually inferior to be accorded U.S. citizenship. In High German I think the word is untermensch. Earlier this week, the Heritage Foundation released a new report, “The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What Must Prince Charles Think of Canada’s Prince of Darkness?
If there’s one bunch of Canadians who adore the monarchy it has to be Conservatives. That’s why it was no end of fun to see the Royal next in line for the throne set fire to the coat tails of the climate change “forces of darkness” which has to include
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: When You Think Bitumen, Think of the World’s Poor and Needy
Who knew? It seems the Harper government’s support for the high-carbon, Athabasca Tar Sands is actually compassionate, even altruistic. We’re just doing our best to help out the world’s poor and needy. A gaggle of Canadian academics and science types just sent Ol’ Joe Oliver a letter asking him to
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Opium – "A Source of Stability" Says U.S. Army
If the mightiest military in the world is okay with the opium trade then what are we doing busting kids for pot? The current opium policy of American forces in Afghanistan is strictly “hands off.” You don’t destroy it, you don’t trample through opium fields, you don’t even encourage the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Too Hot to Handle
When we think of nuclear screw ups it’s usually the Soviet Union/Russia that comes to mind – Chernobyl, submarine accidents, old nuclear reactors jettisoned at sea, that sort of thing. It turns out the United States has its own nuclear quagmire, the 586-square mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Benton county,
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Keeping Population In Perspective
Mankind now numbers well in excess of 7-billion and we’re expected to reach 9-billion before long. Here are a few stats to help you keep that in perspective. When Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” and in American myth discovered the New World, 1492, the world population stood at around 500-million
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Strange Bedfellows Indeed
The British government’s energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, is fighting back against climate change skeptics within the ranks of his own coalition government. Davey is a Liberal Democrat. His party wants action on climate change. The LibDems, however, prop up the Cameron Conservatives where, true to course, the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Living Within Our Skin
It’s a core tenet of our Western industrial/capitalist/democratic orthodoxy that something in the range of 3% annual economic growth is the benchmark of a healthy society. That’s 3% compounded growth. Now let’s take a span of 50-years, roughly one adult lifetime. Let’s say the economy stood at 100X at the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Arctic Ocean Acidifying Rapidly
Oh well, we probably won’t even think about this once the oil spills begin but it turns out that cold sea water is especially absorptive of CO2. And, that is why the Arctic Ocean is rapidly acidifying. Scientists from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme report widespread changes in the
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Insanity is Not Funny, Until It’s Political
At times having to watch America’s seemingly endless death spiral becomes utterly depressing. These are crazy people who have somehow been allowed to rise to positions of authority – people like Rick Santorum or Michelle Bachmann. And then there’s this guy, Virginia Republican nominee for governor, Ken Cuccinelli. Visit NBCNews.com
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Check Out Solar Impulse, Live, Online
Think of it as an aerial solar panel. The aircraft, Solar Impulse, is now winging its way across the United States. It’s currently on the San Fransisco to Phoenix leg of the trip. You can watch it live at live.solarimpulse.com Right now it’s at 15,900 feet with an airspeed of
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Face of Globalization
When you’re racing for the bottom dollar, it eventually costs some people their lives.
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Why Bother With Climate Change? The World is Ending Soon Anyway.
Apparently an awful lot of Americans have embraced “End Times Theology”. As they see it, the world is ending soon anyway so there’s no point worrying about trivialities like climate change. A study by David Barker of the University of Pittsburgh and David Bearce of the University of Colorado concludes
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The White House Ponders an Ice-Free Arctic Ocean
The domestic and international security implications of an ice free Arctic ocean will be briefed at the White House this week. The meeting is bringing together Nasa’s acting chief scientist, Gale Allen, the director of the US National Science Foundation, Cora Marett, as well as representatives from the US Department
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Naomi Klein Attacks Big Enviro
There’s dissension in the ranks of the environmental movement. Naomi Klein has written a piece in The Guardian attacking some A-list environmental groups that, she claims, have been of more help than harm to the fossil fuelers. …some of the most powerful and wealthiest environmental organisations have long behaved as
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