Vancouver pictures

I love this city:


The Library


The Skybridge from the Surrey shore.


West End Tower View.

On Tech Support

Alarming News!

Remember when I used to write about global warming, then stopped? Well I did, check the archives... Today I feel vindicated because experts are starting to question whether or not the Goracle tells the truth.

First Richard S. Lindzen:

Judging from the media in recent months, the debate over global warming is now over. There has been a net warming of the earth over the last century and a half, and our greenhouse gas emissions are contributing at some level. Both of these statements are almost certainly true. What of it? Recently many people have said that the earth is facing a crisis requiring urgent action. This statement has nothing to do with science. There is no compelling evidence that the warming trend we've seen will amount to anything close to catastrophe. What most commentators—and many scientists—seem to miss is that the only thing we can say with certainly about climate is that it changes. [...]
one overlooked mystery is why temperatures are not already higher. Various models predict that a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere will raise the world's average temperature by as little as 1.5 degrees Celsius or as much as 4.5 degrees. The important thing about doubled CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas) is its "forcing"—its contribution to warming. At present, the greenhouse forcing is already about three-quarters of what one would get from a doubling of CO2. But average temperatures rose only about 0.6 degrees since the beginning of the industrial era, and the change hasn't been uniform—warming has largely occurred during the periods from 1919 to 1940 and from 1976 to 1998, with cooling in between. Researchers have been unable to explain this discrepancy.

Yes, that Richard S. Lindzen - the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Of course Laurie Goldstein from the Toronto Sun has an opinion too:

But well-fed, First World, Kyoto fanatics, awash is their naive, pastoral fantasies, don't want the Third World building coal, oil or natural gas-fired energy plants to supply electricity. They also object to nuclear power, which emits no greenhouse gases. They would deny the Third World any realistic means of modernizing itself. Instead, they insanely demonize industrialization and development, the only things that can lift poor nations out of poverty, while lecturing the world's poorest to use wind and solar power, a farce given how impractical and expensive this would be.

Meanwhile, the IPCC and its cheerleaders give us ever-more-hysterical "climate porn" updates -- theoretical predictions of the additional deaths that may occur due to man-made global warming, that ignore the real deaths happening right now because of the Third World's lack of electricity.

Here's African economist and author James Shikwati, interviewed by Channel 4 in Great Britain for its documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle: "One clear thing that emerges from the whole environmental debate is the point that somebody came to kill the African dream, and the African dream is to develop. We are being told 'don't touch your resources. Don't touch your oil. Don't touch your coal.' That is suicide."

On Outrage

So,

My brother is a prominent blogger. He is pretty clearly conservative in his views, but that's not surprising because he started BloggingTories.ca. He is one of best read bloggers in the country because of the quality of his posts and his ability to cut though the MSM bullshit.

This is why I'm outraged. My brother was asked to leave the press scrum on parliment hill 2 weeks ago. Why? Because the MSM decided that he was not allowed to be there. Unfortunately for the MSM, they do not have this right. My brother has a parliment pass and can therefore go where he pleases on the hill.

I'm outraged because members of the press decided to muzzle someone who was out to get a story. They acted as sensorship of the new media, and in the process managed to discredit themselves further in the minds of most of his, and I hope, my, readers.

I hope that the Speaker of the House, who granted Stephen the right to be on the hill, will address this issue. Please check this developing story out at stephentaylor.ca, bloggingtories.ca, and nationalnewswatch.com; the future of honest journalism is at stake.

MC Rove

Looks like someone else is holding the puppet strings today:

On Sleep

This being my first post here at JonTaylor.Ca, I've spent an inordinate amount of time in paralysis, trying to come up with something worthy of the gig. Sadly, great wit and memorable wisdom are not things that I spout on cue. They are things that I produce slowly, organically, and through the rigorous application of ambitious substance abuse.

Instead, I have decided to be useful. Here, then, is a executive summary on sleeping effectively.

A. We sleep in cycles. These cycles last approximately 90 minutes. We sleep lightest at the beginning of the cycle; we sleep heaviest at its end. In between two cycles there are a few minutes where we are not actually asleep; if we wake up during the middle of the night, it is usually during those instances.

B. In order to feel most refreshed upon waking, it is important to wake up in between two cycles, or at the beginning of a new cycle. Thus, it is better to sleep six hours (four complete cycles), than seven hours (waking up near the end of a sleep cycle).

C. Waking up before the end of a sleep cycle is what gives you that 'I-just-got-punched-by-a-brick' feeling that makes putting on your pants a task of herculean proportions.

d. To figure out exactly how long your sleep cycle is, keep an eye out the next few times you sleep without an alarm clock. Figure out what the common multiple is between those sleep sessions. That is the length of your sleep cycle.

e. Finally, don't waste your time trying to enlighten someone in the throes of fanaticism. This has nothing to do with sleep. It's just good advice.

[source: The Owner's Manual for the Brain, Third Ed.]