Just the way I see it.: May 2022

Tuesday, 17 May 2022

Our Prisons are overcrowded. Criminals run rampant! [AFLB] May 2009'ish

Our prisons are overcrowded. Criminals run rampant

by edouin

Link: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/august10/politics/abolition_alternatives.html

Have you noticed the apathy we have fallen into lately? Instead of fighting crime, we are instead strengthening our defences against criminals. Home Security Systems, “The Club” Steering Wheel lock, Car Alarms, pet alarms, Pepper Spray for women and so on. In the meantime, new tools for our Police are popular with the criminally intent. Zappers/Stunners, Bear Spray, extending rods for offensive attack (commonly used for riot control), armour piercing ammunition, body armour and vehicles with custom armour built in to protect criminals from not only police, but other criminals. The list goes on.

In Canada, unregistered possession of weapons is against the law. So, they invented the Gun Registry to keep track of those who legally owned weapons. Good idea, that! Now we know which weapons the Criminals do NOT have.

Well Done.

Billions spent on an ass-backwards idea! Perhaps if they had done the reverse...but what criminal is going to actually register his switch-blade knife, his 9mm, his .45, his shotgun, his automatic assault rifle, his rocket launcher, his 2kg of C4 explosives, his anti-aircraft missle launcher and his Abrams Tank!

Get real! The criminals have the power, not the citizens and especially not our Police Forces. And now, Prisoners and their self-admitted “allies” are actively campaigning to abolish the prison system! Thats right! There are “Abolitionists” who believe that incarcerating prisoners is bad for them, and does nothing for the victims! See the link at top (in green) for these idiots!
We have to take the power back from the criminals.

But under Canadian Law, we can't. Criminals are protected under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There is NO WAY that we will ever be able to; after all, isn't that what Prisons are for? To Segregate, Punish and Rehabilitate Criminals?

Meh, not in Canada!

Not one of these will happen with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms sticking out of their back pockets.

When I was a little lad, I was taught in school and my parents that when you went to jail, you lose many rights because you are undergoing punishment against Society, and therefore lose many of the same priveledges and conveniences as citizens. Like Santa Claus, this has become just a dream.
Just recently – I realized that ALL prisoners in Canada enjoy the same full benefits and priveledges as other citizens of Canada, and therefore, they are not adequately “punished”, nor rehabilitated.

That means that they have not paid their debt to Society simply because it contravenes our Constitutional Rights.

Being in a Canadian prison is nothing more than semi-isolation from society, but with all the comforts, communications, voting, healthcare and legal resources available to everyone else in Canada.

I'm talking about all the Rights and Freedoms granted to all Canadian Citizens will no longer apply to prisoners while incarcerated. This also means that they will no longer have the right to vote, do not have the right to refuse to work or refuse to undergo Therapies necessary for rehabilitation from criminal habits to being a healthy asset to Canadian Society.

Continued Refusal to undergo therapy and job training will only lengthen the terms of their sentences. This would also take away a lot of their “creature comforts”, such as cable TV, Weight Rooms, Communications with outside agencies (crime gangs/syndicates/hit-men/etc), fancy meals and so on. As well, we can now “force” the prisoners to actively work to pay for their upkeep, rehabilitation and repay their victims in a monetary manner!

Not only would this make incarceration a much more stronger deterrent, but it would also serve to better rehabilitate those incarcerated as they would have more a more intense experience with the rehabilitation methods, re-training, Social Skill adjustments and so on.

They will not have the time, comfort or be able to afford to create their own inner “gangs”, create a new “Society of Fear” within the walls as no one will have the “Right” to do such a thing.

Prison Guards will also be given stronger and better tools to deal with unruly prisoners, resulting in a smoother running prison system. Better control systems need to be developed so that interpersonal contact between civilians, guards and prisoners is kept to an absolute minimum, closing loop-holes in the Black Market that infects every prison in Canada.

Perhaps, after incarceration, while on Parole, this can also be a “Citizenship Application Trial” period, where the probationer must also undergo Citizenship training, language training (if unable to speak English or French!) and must pass the standard Citizenship test to regain his Citizenship.

If the probationer was born in Canada, and failed, the probationer must work and live under a “Visa” system until they can regain their Citizenship. If the probationer was an immigrant, and failed the Citizenship test, they will be refused entry into Canada and sent to their home country. Pleading Humanitarian aid will not work as they are convicts in our country and are no longer welcome. Simple, eh?

I know that we cannot trample upon our prisoners willy-nilly - International Law will still exist to protect prisoners from “over-compensating”, but perhaps this is one manner to take back control of our prisons, eh? Perhaps this method of incarceration can become so effective that the length of prison sentences can then be reduced, saving the government and taxpayers millions of dollars each year! Re-offences will go down, and the quality of Canadian Life will go up as well!

Break a law under the “Criminal Code of Canada” heading, and whoosh, off you go to never-never land - you have just temporarily voided your citizenship until your restitution to society has been established/furnished. Petty “non-criminal” crimes can continue to be prosecuted and punishment meted out as normal, but with this “next step up” manner of punishment hanging over criminals heads, the line between petty theft and aggravated theft is a slim one.

I know its not perfect, but in a world with no answers, perhaps this is one answer that can be considered?

That's just the way I see it.

Effectively combat criminals on an advantageous footing, be it in the courts or on the street.
Effectively prosecute criminals without dragging court cases for so long that under the charter, they will be set free – guilty or not!
Effectively administer sufficiently long prison sentences.
Effectively incarcerate criminals from Society and from other Criminal elements still out on our streets.
Effectively rehabilitate criminals while incarcerated
Effectively control our prisoner population
Effectively “punish” convicted prisoners

So, I think the solution for this problem is quite simple!

"Suspend Citizenship” while incarcerated. Then all prisoners will have to go through the very same process any immigrant will need to go through to regain Canadian Citizenship.

AND if they fail, then is deportation of The Crown's Prisoners to Australia still a thing? Just kidding!

[2022 popping in here for a second. I think at that time, I was imagining some sort of "collar" or other "wearable" item, including clothing, that can be utilized to restrain, inhibit, paralize or apply controlled levels of pain to force prisoners to behave, a first step towards reintegration into polite society.]

Perhaps, after incarceration, while on Parole, this can also be a “Citizenship Application Trial” period, where the probationer must also undergo Citizenship training, language training (if unable to speak English or French and vice-versa!) and must pass the standard Citizenship test to regain their Citizenship.

I know its not perfect, but in a world with no answers, perhaps this is one answer that can be considered?

Swine-Flu outbreak 2009 - [AFLB] Pandemic or Annual event?

April'ish, 2009

Swine-Flu outbreak 2009 Pandemic or Annual event?

OK, I've been sitting back, watching the news, online links, reading the papers and listening/reading conversations online and at the cafe about the current 2009 Swine Flu "Pandemic".

Get Real!

In Canada alone last year, 4,000 people died from the Flu.

Just in Canada!
No one has died from this years Swine Flu - yet.

World-Wide, 2.2 Billion people catch the Flu annually. Over 100,000 die from it.

The only difference between the Annual Flu "epidemic" and this so-called "Pandemic" is the media and Political scuffling going on.

Yes, this strain seems more virulent, and yes, it is wise to take measures to contain it, but, as I said, we must keep it all in context.

The first death in the US was a Mexican Baby that was too young to have a well developed immune system.
The first "patient-zero" was also a 5 year old child.

So, while concern should be expressed about this "outbreak", throwing words like "Pandemic" and "Epidemic", sowing the fear of "thousands of deaths" (which happens annually anyways...) or the Biblical "End of the World" on the front page of every newspaper does nothing to calm public fears - in fact, it only serves to inflame it, sell more newspapers and make politicians look good that they are "concerned" and "actively doing something about it".

* An alert should go out - Yes.
* People should be warned about the contagion - Yes.
* People should be washing their hands more often - Yes.
* People should reconsider visiting Mexico due to the "outbreak" of this strain of the Flu - Yes.
* People should be made to panic so as to enlarge profits of newspapers, political careers and cause emergency rooms to become flooded with hyper-aware and hyper-sensitive, overly-emotional "flu-infectees" - NO!

Now some facts about this Swine Flu:

This year's flavour is a combination between FOUR different Viruses.
This year's flavour has a mutation that allows person-to-person transmission. This is THE reason the WHO raised the Pandemic level to 4.
The Swine (pigs) in this case, are considered "Mixing Vessels" for these four different strains to develop. It took one person to be the "superinfection" that started it all.
Today (April 29), the WHO stated that a majority of people infected with this strain of Flu will make a full recovery without need of medical attention or antiviral drugs.
Today, Spain confirmed a case in a person who had not travelled to Mexico - one they consider a "separate" but "similar strain".
In March, in the small town of La Gloria, Veracruz, 60% of the population came down with the flu that became a serious respiratory illness, but no one died. In April, the 5 year old child became Patient Zero - from this very same town. No one else in this town has caught this Swine Flu...Hmmmmm.
The first adult to die was a diabetic woman who died of respiratory complications.

Personally, I think that there is a lot of bull being slung around, confusing the facts and making the REAL people responsible for helping others work just that much harder.

I'm not saying this is a "non-event" - far from it, but we need to approach this outbreak with a better level of management and maturity.

I, for one, will be washing my hands more often than I already do. I will try to avoid shaking hands if at all possible. Same with kissing strangers. (That's gonna put a cramp in my lifestyle!!!)

It's NOT the end of the world. But it is a serious problem and should be handled with a modicum of sanity.

And I will personally kick in the nuts anyone who tries to make hay out of this event.

That's just the way I see it...

I'm a Baaaaaaad Boy! [AFLB] July 2009'ish

I just wanted to take this opportunity to give thanks to whomever is providing me the free WIFI network access while I sit at Sobeys coffee shop meditating life and checking my cat's discussion boards.

Whoever owns the "dlink wireless network" and the "linksys wireless network" in the vicinity of Sobey's, please contact me and I come over and assist you in securing your network from people who may not be as "user-friendly" as I am. Of course, I will also offer remuneration for my past use, and hopefully, continued future use.

Thank-you.

Edwin

ETA 25 July, '09. Gee, Thanks you paranoid greedy little bastard. Now you've gone ahead and encrypted your wireless connection so I can no longer log onto your router for Internet connectivity.

If only more people would be like you, less viruses (Virii?) would be happening. You bastard. Now I have to use my smartphone to surf the 'net while having my morning coffee and apple fritter.

UPDATE November 2009. Well, the hell with it - I've gone ahead and converted my Smartphone's digital connectivity to a Rogers Rocket Stick, those nifty USB sticks that look like those USB Drives that everyone is carrying around in their pockets, except that the Rogers Rocket Stick gives me internet connectivity just about as fast as my home broadband - I think I'm getting at least a couple of MegaBits of speed. This "stick" apparently can handle the latest signal, the HSUPA standard, which I just so happen to get in my area! WoooWeeee!

And that's just the way I see it!

What I think the City of Fort Saskatchewan should do next. [AFLB] May 2009

Last edited in 2009, during the reign of President Obama, and frankly, some "not too far looking" local City Counsellors . Pretty much stand by what I wrote 13 years ago, so it could not have been too bad of a blog post. Unfortunately, I lost all my domain data, formatting, feedback and comments when the software locked up during an incremental update and toasted by whole website. Has never been the same since.

So, I bring you "What I think the city of Fort Saskatchewan should do next. - brought to you by Alter Funker Looks Back "[AFLB]

I've been thinking lately about our great little City of Fort Saskatchewan., and how we can improve our image, encourage more people to move here and how to foster better relations between the citizens (read as “employers) and City Staff and City Council (Read as (employees).

Every time either the City Council or City Staff comes up with an idea, they spend tens of thousands of dollars to present their case to the citizens of the City. How much of the public bothers to actually attend City Council meetings?

How many attend any of the “Open Houses” that are staged to “enlighten” Joe and Jane Public about the proposals and requirements, effects and affects of such proposals - if come to fruition – will have on the average citizen.

We need to look at several things. What is my (and our) goal? To save the City of Fort Saskatchewan a lot of money, right? What's my next goal? To enable better communications to and between the public, the City Council and Staff and the citizens of this City. This will get a lot more done in a lot less time and at a lot less expense.

How can we all – City staff, Council and Public – meet together at any given time to all view any proposals, the status of such proposals, remarks about these proposals, any other relative information (costs, contractor's bids and costs, then City staff discussions and/or justifications with going with certain contractors) and so on. Can any proposal increase the potential to create a new environment of “transparency” to the public? Will this also tend to hold City staff and Council to a more responsible and responsive standard. The answer, dear Joe and Jane Public to all the above is... Yes, actually, it is ALL quite easily done!

OK, So how to we do all this? Well honestly, it actually IS quite easy and inexpensive, but the real cost is the “willingness” to make it happen. Most likely, this will save the City tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands of OUR dollars – and encourage much, much more participation by Joe and Jane Public in City Activities and the Decision Making Processes the Council is always requesting...

Here is THE plan:1.The City of Fort Saskatchewan convert all current and future documents, “Office Suites” and perhaps many other applications to the International “Open Standards” and “Open Source” packages now either being considered or used by many countries simply for cost savings and ease of access by literally everyone;

Identify opportunities to distribute more information to the public by enlarging the City's Corporate Website;
Index and Publish ALL it's data to the Internet using the above mentioned open standards, interfaces and formats;
Develop a plan to digitize and distribute all archival data, including all documents and images, to the public – This can be done in conjunction with the local Museum;
Ensure the data being supplied to the City by Third-parties such as contractors, developers and consultants are unlicensed in one of the open standards formats and not copyrighted unless other legal considerations make this not possible, and;
License any Software developed by the City of Fort Saskatchewan so that they can be used by other municipalities, businesses and the public without restrictions; and,
Other cities such as Washington D.C., San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver are also going in this direction simply as it makes business sense, saves a lot of money, and gives businesses more data to better provide services to the general population, and the local public can then make more aware decisions.

What I would like to see.

The whole idea is to make the City more accessible to the public. This WILL save lots of money!

For example, City Council meetings can be captured by a web-enabled camera and posted and indexed to the City's Website for all to access, so the public can actually see which decisions were made and how such decisions were presented to be made. People then become more enfranchised to become a part of the decision-making process and then make it a point to attend meetings to perhaps become part of this process.

This is light-years ahead of a “digest” format by some newspaper reporter. If the public is indeed talking about some decision or policy, it will be easy to access and view the original reason and rationale for any decisions and/or policy changes by the Council, or by City Staff. The Public soon learns that if they want any changes, they can interact with the City Council at these meetings, affect decisions, and perhaps offer other potentials, making the whole system work better, and at a lower cost simply by being transparent to the Public!

Other documents that do not need to respect security and privacy issues can be made public in this forum as well. The City works for it's citizens, and there is little requirement to keep any or all discussions hidden/secret; The City must provide the public with access to such data, and in a format that the average citizen can access at home, in a timely and transparent manner at no cost to them.

So, what have we done? Saved tens of thousands annually in Licensing costs for Microsoft Office or other licensed software, and instead, downloaded and installed a free and comparable Office Suite such as “Open Office”, an Internationally known and respected Free Office Suite that does the same as Microsoft's Office software. The US Government is considering swapping over to Open Office as it would save umpteen million$ in licensing fee's alone!

Open Office is a free, open-source multinational, multi-language suite that can open any MS Office documents, and then save them with minimal format changes into an Open Standard document, or even save them an Adobe PDF file as well.

We will have improved transparency within City Government, cut costs and enabled people to use the data to create new useful products, including commercial ones.

The City Council has to remember that it is our taxes that has paid for this data to be collected in the first place! Why can we not view it when we want?

Another little thing that can (and should) be made available for the public is to view what is being collected by any of the City's many Traffic Camera's simply by splitting the feed to the City's Website and a simple page with an “Open-Source” video viewer, so anyone can log on using any browser, and see what any camera is currently viewing, including the camera in Council Chambers. Most Cities, like Edmonton, have such a page, and I encourage the Fort to do the same.

If Fort Saskatchewan wants to attract more businesses and residents, it needs to take up the mantle of a responsible, transparent and modern City that knows how to adapt with the times, respect our security and privacy while still being able to provide the best information access and government transparency only available (or being considered) in the “Huge City” market.

I think we should be doing such changes starting now while any start-up costs to implement such a policy is negligible and easily recoverable, instead of waiting until the City is much larger, before any such change-over is much more expensive, more difficult to implement and actually a much larger project to make backwards compatible as well.

Now is also the time to bring forward and implement such a proposal, as costs in this “recession” have come tumbling down, and implementation of such a proposal will cost much less than it will in a vibrant booming economy such as we had only 1 year ago.

Now is the time to do this!

The City of Vancouver just recently endorsed the same principle of making its data open and accessible to everyone where possible, adopting open standards for that data and considering open source software when replacing existing applications and software, possibly saving millions of dollars each year.

We should be next! We have the potential to set the National Standard for all Cities of Small and Medium sizes! Let the Big Cities do it their way. We can implement it faster, go further, for less money all the while getting more return out of our tax dollars.

I believe Fort Saskatchewan residents are more "connected" to the world via the Internet than any other "average large town or small city", and we should take advantage of this while we can!

I must acknowledge the help of CBC News to research this subject.

UPDATE 26 May, 2009

I am reading the Washington Post today (yes, I do read newspapers from around the world - online!), and there is a nice article with the following headline: Open-Government Tools Unveiled by White House.

What they have done as of today, is started implementing the Policy President Obama committed his government towards developing "Transparency Policies". So, today, Phase One of a Three Phase process included the tools towards developing these policies.

These tools allow citizens, government employees, officials, and pretty much anyone with an interest in developing transparency policies, to brainstorm, discuss and then help draft the guidelines. So if President Obama can do it, why can't Fort Saskatchewan do it???

That's just the way I see it...

Saturday, 14 May 2022

Sorry for taking so long to get back on this Sis. I remember I watched the video when you first sent it waaaay back when, but when I tried to reload it, it is no longer available. However the issue is not lost upon me. Just as a reminder, ICE stands for Internal Combustion Engine (saves me a ton of typing LOL)

By User:Wapcaplet - Own work, made with Blender, CC BY-SA 3.0,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=182044

In any case, most folks think Electric Cars are the Cats' Ass, but I believe they are not aware of the full story. Yes, Electric is more efficient, and while it may cost over $100 to fill up a ICE motor while an electric car only costs $7 to fill, one could obviously think that it is a no-brainer. And sadly, many do.

Lately, there has been more information added to the growing pile of concerns, and a major consideration is that the battery packs in these vehicles "may" require replacement if even a few cells become defective for whatever reason.

The cure? Replace the whole damned battery pack.

That's between $10L and $20K per pack. That cost is not built into any price compairsons that I have seen.

Look, it may only cost $3-6K to replace a Gas/diesel ICE motor, and odds are that during the entire life of your car, it may never need a replacement motor, the cost to do so is much less. eVeh's are much more likely to need a replacement in 10 years, while the ICE is chugging merrily along. So...backloaded expenses.

This is why the industry is screaming along trying to develop safer, larger, stronger and more powerful batteries made from common, safe elements. Here is a list of the Top 5 latest battery technologies

1. Nanotube-Lithium-Tungsten

2. Zinc-manganese oxide batteries

3. Organosilicon electrolyte batteries

4. Gold nanowire gel electrolyte batteries, and

5. TankTwo String Cell™ batteries.

Bonus #1 IBM's "Sea Water" Batteries

So, to get back to Tesla, they are falling behind GM and Ford because Tesla does not have Dealerships, marketing directly to buyers, then giving them a list of local agencies that are capable of maintaining the vehicle. Tesla does not do maintenance on it's own vehicles, and this is coming back to bite their butt as GM and Ford crank up their architecture to swap over to eVeh's.

Just to add to my statements above. There ARE a few select Tesla Dealerships, but again, mostly located in affluent neighbourhoods. In Alberta, there is just ONE dealership in Calgary (of course.).

Here is what is available in my nearest city, Edmonton. I has 1 Store ( in reality, a Nissan Infinity Dealership) trying to hone into some lucrative money, I suppose. There are 8 locations in Edmonton and area to charge a Tesla, only 1 supercharger location near downtown Edmonton. No dealerships, no Collision centres.

Calgary has 1 Dealership (with service centre!), 13 Charger locations, (No superchargers!), no collision centres, unless the dealership is into that too? One cannot tell from their "nonexistant" website that is soooo generic that details are muchly overlooked!

Heck, even the Tesladealer listings for dealerships only have them in Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver...

So as you would guess, Ford and GM do not suffer this rather large problem as they already have established dealerships and garages around the world.

However, in N. America, dealerships are privately owned, having signed a MOU with the manufacturers insofar as price standards, training standards and corporate SOP's.

Along with this is the fact that the dealerships must pay to send their guys for training on new models of vehicles, and the electric vehicles will put a small strain upon their budgets as there is less "fiddle room" to inflate any PO or repair bill. Also, tech courses tend to be more expensive, so not all dealerships are on board with maintaining, or heck, even selling, electric vehicles.

Many of these courses are upgrade courses, and some are mandatory, with the Corporation paying for that training. Especially on new Tech items. So...we'll see what happens next.

We are almost to the fulcrum between ICE and Electric. I don't think we will EVER get rid of ICE's as the power to weight ratio is too overwhelming over battery, that operations in the Arctic can only economically be done using ICE's.

I do, however believe in the slightly more difficult change-over to Hydrogen. It is a nearly infinite supply (think all the oceans and other water sources!!!), something we cannot say for natural gas or oil.

Solar/Wind is an effective tool to maintain network capabilities during high-use times, helping to keep that power bump down in cost. Mega-batteries attached to these farms are also a great idea.

In Australia, Tesla installed a 100 MegaWatt batterie next to a locally city's solar farm, and it paid for itself in 3 years, and now saves the city upwards of $3-5 million in savings over using the standard utility. They have recently installed another 50 MW battery in yet another city's solar farm. Go Aussies!!!

This is still new tech, and is still being tweaked, but the result is inevitable - it just makes fiscal sense to use this system. Texas sure as hell could have used such a system, but because Texas is so deregulated, they just fall on their collective butts every single time a simple issue pops up because it is not profitable to have backup and huge safety margins.

This is a case of Front-Loading the industry, and the industry saying "nope, no profit in that!". So...Texas...yeah.

Anyways, I have no intention of buying an eVeh for some time to come as I may not be able to handle the down-stream giant-expense for any replacement, modification or emergency repairs. Just not in this guy's cards.

Unless I win one, of course...

Like this guy: Ford F-150 Lightening

Just the way I see it.