List Week at the Star

Back from a long absence, I have but one thing to say; I have a problem with councillors making a big deal out of giving back their annual cost-of-living pay increase. As far as I can deduce, Toronto city councillors, like many other municipal job-holders, are entitled to two types of pay raise each year - regular pay raises due to promotions, good performance, accumulated time working, etc., and their annual cost-of-living increase, which I presume works to cover inflation and the naturally rising cost of living. Now, some Toronto city councillors have made some petition apparently, and they're trying to get all the other city councillors to sign this petition and give back their cost-of-living pay increase. Now I have several problems with this idea. Firstly, the media (Toronto Star?) has gone and put the faces of all these counsellors who haven't signed the petition on their front page with the headline "Why won't they give their pay back?" (or something to that effect, I've misplaced the article.) What is this but a blatant attempt to stir up discontent among people at their respective councillors? Secondly, if it weren't for the fact that these hard-working members of society are councillors, they would not have all this public hype surrounding them concerning giving back an increase that is actually, not really a raise - it is, after all, a cost-of-living increase. Thirdly is the fact that many of these unduly famous councillors have already given back their yearly pay raise a few months ago. My last issue with this is the fact that there are a handful of councillors who have taken that "initiative" to stir up this pot, and who have taken that effort to alienate themselves from the rest of city council by saying "Hey look at us, we're making this petition and we're signing it to make us look good and the rest of the councillors look like greedy, ungrateful bastards hoarding city cash in the face of an economic crisis".

Well shame on them! Not those on the front page of the Star, I mean those doing the "political grandstanding", or so it's called. Anyways, I sure wouldn't want to be one of those people, and if I knew that coming into a job with such great responsability would entail harassment from my coworkers all over a little pay raise, I certainly would not take that job.

Cheers

Kamster

WHAT IS LOVE!

I recently read an article somewhere about intrinsic value. The concept of something being intrinsically good has baffled people for ages, and even now people disagree - what is it about something that makes it good in and of itself?

Suppose that someone were to ask you whether it is good to help others in time of need. Unless you suspected some sort of trick, you would answer, “Yes, of course.” If this person were to go on to ask you why acting in this way is good, you might say that it is good to help others in time of need simply because it is good that their needs be satisfied. If you were then asked why it is good that people's needs be satisfied, you might be puzzled. You might be inclined to say, “It just is.” Or you might accept the legitimacy of the question and say that it is good that people's needs be satisfied because this brings them pleasure. But then, of course, your interlocutor could ask once again, “What's good about that?” Perhaps at this point you would answer, “It just is good that people be pleased,” so as to put an end to this line of questioning. Or perhaps you would again seek to explain the fact that it is good that people be pleased in terms of something else that you take to be good.

Let us look at the case of psychedelic drugs, like marijuana, cocaine, ecstasy, whatever - these drugs supposedly give you a high that can bring you to a sort of supra-rational state; is this good? I say yeah, sure. Why not? People in pain take drugs - it's as simple as that. Those in physical pain take tylenol, and those in emotional pain take tylenol. Why not let people smoke? say it's all just bureaucracy and red tape, and some sort of age-old racial stigmas, too, that is keeping people from havin' a toke every so often.

But that's not my point, the point here is really kind of stupid; it's just that it's real tough to say you know, "GUYS COCAINE IS BAD, DON'T DO IT!" What do you judge things by, their merit, the pleasure it induces or the pain it will help you forget? I don't know, really!

Cheers

Kamster

Swine Flew!

AHHHHHHHHH PIG INFLUENZA

We are all pretty scared I'd say of this new part-avian-part-swine-part-human super-influenza that has taken the world by storm. I'm pretty scared myself, you know? There are those doomsayer scientists who predict if this becomes a full-blown pandemic, up to two billion people (one-third of the world's population) could be infected! That's pretty scary honestly. The good news is that here in Canada, most of the confirmed cases have experienced mild symptoms, and the virus itself doesn't seem to be spreading too fast. What I find scary is the similarity some of those crisis room world maps have to this game called Pandemic 2. In it, you create a fictional disease and strive to take over the world. You might in fact name that disease Influenza H1N1a, and try to kill off the world's population before scientists can find a vaccine against you! 

Cheers

Kamster

YOU5

I recently had my cell phone plan changed to My5. I've never had such a plan before but it seems pretty good, as I mostly call only a small group of people. I also have something like seven hundred shared minutes with my sister and father, and a whole lot of text messages. In these "tough economic times", it seems many people are trying to save money on just about anything. However those whom i'm in immediate contact with don't seem to be taking this economic downturn too hard at all. In fact, I haven't seen any real actions taken on those peoples' parts to reflect a change of attitude with regard to saving money, cutting back on non-essentials etc. This could mean several things, or it could just mean I've been eating out too much -_-.

But alas, good news! From now until May 3, you can get a free small coffee at McDonalds any time until 10:30 in the morning! You can take a look at the *official* facebook event here. What is that like, 23 coffees or something? EXPLOIT DAT SHIT YE

Cheers

Kamster

Energy Savings, Maybe?

Today, I thought up of a weird idea that may one day revolutionize society. Most people in the Western world wake up early, are in the office by nine, work till noon, take a lunch break, go back to work and are back home by five or six. Why not shift our work hours ahead, and save a lot of energy in the process? For most families, the parents are at their workplace for most of the daylight hours, as are their children (if they attend school). During this nine-to-five period of time, energy usage in the home - due to lights, appliances, heating, whatever - drops drastically, I would guess, as there is simply no one at home to use energy. Instead, energy consumption comes from the energy used at the workplace - keeping all those lights on, running those copying machines, and so on and so forth. Then when parents and children return home for the evening, lights and appliances are once again switched on. In essence, with our current state of affairs, we are using electricity both at home and at the workplace, from the start of our day to the end.

But imagine if we shifted our nine to five workday (and similar "school day") five hours ahead. Work and school would start sometime around three or four o clock, instead of the nine as it is now. What would the advantages of such a situation be? Well, people usually keep the lights on at home only during the evening and night hours, when there isn't much sunlight. The same isn't true, however, of most people's workplaces. Lights have to be on work, regardless of whether the sun is out. So, by moving work later into the night and allowing people to do their family, leisure and recreational activities in the morning and early afternoon hours, we could potentially save a lot of energy! People spending time at home in the morning rather than at night wouldn't switch any lights on, but if they were doing the same at night as they are now, they probably would have the lights on (or at least some).

I probably haven't described this very clearly but if you see what I'm trying to get it, a shift of the workday could save lots of energy consumed by lights.

More later.

Cheers,

Kamster

Is this like the End of the World or something?

^ WHAT A BEAST ^

Today, I went and saw the movie Knowing with some church pals. What a mistake that was. Ok, actually it was kind of my idea to see the movie because honestly, the movie posters looked so damn cool and I couldn't pass up another chance to see Nicholas Cage making a fool of himself again. Too bad it turned out to be a huge dissapointment. Knowing is a story of this guy, I think his name is Jon or something, who finds out through his son that the world is going to end (yeah you know, it's almost the most original movie I've ever seen!). He figures this out by Googling some numbers he finds on a piece of paper that this crazy little girl put in a time capsule fifty years ago. Turns out that girl, as well as Jon's son, Caleb, are both being whispered to by some crazy aliens or angels (which we don't realize until the last ten minutes of the movie) who want to obliterate the earth, saving just two humans to "start over". Well you know, the premise of this movie really isn't that bad; I mean, a quest to discover the meaning of these mysterious scrawled numbers, and a plan to re-invent the human race? It sounds like you could really make something out of it, right? It's just a shame that this movie was just too disjointed, totally random and horror-ish to live up to it's cool image of numbers falling off the earth. I still wrap my head around those "angels"! The worst part is that throughout the entire movie, they keep showing up in the forest near Jon's house, staring through the windows at Caleb while they stand there, immobile, like human-shaped telephone poles or something wacky like that. Sort of way too creepy and pedo, right? Nicholas Cage delivered on his necessary comedy act though. I remember there was a scene where he was like "IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK, IT'S NOT GOING TO WORK AHH". Watch his performance in The Wicker Man and you will see why I find this guy so utterly hilarious. He's but a mediocre actor but he has great potential to be a comedian, I think. Really!

Cheers,

Kamster