Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

There's a new way of selling ideas today. Fear.

I opened my morning paper on Friday to see an article about how to explain global warming to your children so that they won't be afraid of it. But the whole global warming pitch is all about creating fear, even in children. David Suzuki spoke on global warming at an elementary school in Edmonton, Canadalast week:

Suzuki, who was invited to speak at Calgary's Altadore elementary school and accept $835 collected by the students for his foundation, asked kids what Harper's main priority was after being elected last year.

"The only thing he cares about is getting re-elected with a majority government," he said, adding any of the PM's pledges to preserve the environment are cynical ploys to that end.

"I don't believe there is a green bone in Harper's body - he has never, ever indicated he cares about the environment."

He told the room some of his message was directed at the adults, because the youngsters don't vote and Harper and other politicians don't care about them.

"It's up to your moms and dads to ensure your futures and livelihoods are part of the agenda," he said to about 185 students ranging from kindergarten to Grade 6.

Yes kids, your futures and your lives are in danger. It's a bit like Chicken Little. Tell people that the sky is falling. Back it up with snippets of science that suggest a scenario that is "very likely". And if someone diagrees with you just accuse them of being "deniers"; say that they don't care.Ignore conflicting information. Supress discussion and dissent. Create more fear.

The goal? To solve the problem? We if that were true, then more information and discussion would be a good thing, right?

No this is all about control.

Experts like Al Gore and David Suzuki who have become self-appointed experts on the issue of global warming, who clearly know that they are right and all who disagree are wrong, want to exert control over the way we live - because we live the wrong way apparently. But don't dare question them:

David Suzuki became a walking advertisement for global warming proof positive when he angrily stormed out of a radio interview with Toronto AM640's John Oakley one week ago today.

Suzuki, a prominent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) television commentator, who motors around Canada in a bus garishly painted with climate change logos, registered hot air when Oakley suggested that global warming might not be the "totally settled issue" Suzuki is out there shilling.

It reminds me of the movie American President, in which the title character Michael Douglas comments on a potential presidential challenger:

Whatever your particular problem is I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things, and two things only; making you afraid of it, and telling you who is to blame for it. And that ladies and gentlemen is how you win elections.

As the story goes, we need to be very afraid of global warming. Oh and by the way, it is our very successes that have caused this problem. We are to blame - if we live in the western world that is.

The solution is simple though. The United Nations and the governments of the world will solve the problem by creating much more bureaucracy and assuming much more control over the way we live and the way our economies work. Unless we live in a developing country such as China or India that is.

Just as a sanity check, when was the last time the UN or any government actually successfully solved any kind of problem?The thought of bureaucrats telling me how to live my life? Now that's fear.

Tip of the hat to small dead animals.

Steve Janke at Angry in the Great White North points out today that the former Liberal government of Canada knew when they signed on to the Kyoto Accord that its targets were unachievable. And according to the Toronto Star that comes direct from one of the Prime Minister's senior advisors:

The previous Liberal government ratified the Kyoto Protocol knowing Canada wasn't ready to take the tough measures needed to address climate change and would likely miss the deadlines for reducing emissions, says a top adviser to former prime minister Jean Chrétien.

Eddie Goldenberg said in a speech today that the Chrétien government nevertheless signed and ratified the international pact because it was an "absolutely necessary" first step in galvanizing public opinion to meet the global warming challenge

So even though they know that the targets couldn't be achieved almost 10 years ago, let alone now, they still had no problem passing a law forcing the current government to meet targets they never had any intention of meeting.

Read Steve's complete post. It provides a lot more interesting information such as how the targets were set to make the Prime Minister look good:

It was important for Jean Chretien to be seen as an environmental leader. So despite the secret memo warning of serious political problems he gave the order to commit Canada to emissions to 6% below 1990 levels. Wilkinson remembers, "Everyone was surprised that we had a number that moved us on a path to meaningful reductions. Some people in the room were ecstatic, others shocked and concerned." Insiders say the decision had less to do with science or economics, than the with the Prime Minister's desire to be keeping up with the US.

Albert Einstein said:

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough”

The city of Waterloo, Canada, where I currently live, requires dog owners to buy a dog tag licence every year. The bottom of the application form has this ominous threat:

Failure to purchase a Dog Licence before March 1 may result in a $125.00 fine and a $30.00 victim surcharge.

Now who would the victim be? My dog, because she doesn't have a license? Or me, because I'm paying a $30.00 victim surcharge for a victimless bylaw infraction?

Yet the back of the application form lists the licence fees for purchase before March 1 AND after March 1. So they'll take your money after March 1 too, but you just might get a fine as well.

From Running into Fences on today's NY Times opinion page:

If a barreling teenager knocks over a wooden fence in Deer Park, and nobody is there to capture it for YouTube, is he still an idiot?

From donors at a sperm bank that is. Women want to know a lot more about potential fathers for their children:

While the women who used his sperm may be perfectly satisfied, women today seem to be looking for a more unquestionably accomplished sort of man. Handsome and brilliant. Talented and charming. Loving and kind. A match one might only dream of finding in the flesh.

“Many women see this as another way to give their child a head start in life,” says Lori Andrews, a professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law who has studied the sperm bank industry, of the high stakes of sperm selection.

And increasingly, say the banks, women want proof of perfection before buying a dream donor’s sperm.

So what are they looking for?

So who is Mr. Right for today’s woman?

He can’t be fat.

“We look for a height-weight ratio that is within the norm,” Dr. Sims explains.

Being short is negotiable.

“If you have a 5-foot-7 or -8 donor who is a medical student or Ph.D. scientist, that outweighs the height issue in many situations,” Dr. Sims says.

Education matters. California Cryobank only takes men who are in college or who graduated from a four-year college. At the Fairfax bank, “there is a preference for guys with medical and law degrees,” Mr. Jaeger says.

I don't recall dating being that complex.

I have two teenagers. More correctly my sons are 19 and 21 years old. Between them and my wife and I we own every kind of gadget you can think of. TVs, DVD players, laptops, iPods, cellphones, minidisc players, and so on. In fact each one of us has more than one of each of those devices.

As new devices have come out my kids have sold their old gadgets so that they can buy new ones. The New York Times has noticed this:

Consider Greg Stoft, 18, who lives with his parents in Fremont, Calif. He wanted to buy a $45 skateboard, but he doesn’t work and his parents recently decided to tighten the purse strings, he said. To get the money, he decided to sell his used iPod Nano on Craigslist, the free online bulletin board.

Though they note that teens are driven to new gadgets by their hipness factor, one quote suggests that teens are forced to adapt new technology:

“It is part of this generation’s DNA,” said Gary Rudman, president of GTR Consulting, a youth-culture market research firm in San Francisco. “This generation is forced to adapt, adopt and advance when it comes to technology. Basically what’s happening is, unlike previous generations that had the luxury of understanding a piece of technology and slowly adopting it, this generation is on a treadmill.”

It isn't that teens are forced to adapt; they do it by nature.And technology is changing at a faster pace than ever before.

Cassette tape players debuted in 1964. CDs didn't arrive until 20 years later in 1984. Then it only took a little more than a decade until MP3s appeared. Thirty years of progression in listening to music. And in those years nothing really changed on the players.

Consider the iPod. Introduced in 2001 it has progressed in a mere 5 years from being a music player to a video player, and eventually to a phone. In a generation of teenagers with plenty of disposable income, it is more of a fashion accessory than a gadget. And essentially a disposable one.

Cellphones follow the same trend. From phones to cameras to music players to email devices in that same five years.

Technology is changing incredibly quickly and teens are merely adapting to it as they always have. This is the kind of planned obsolence scenario that marketers and technology companies can only dream of.

Mark Evans commented the other day on addiction to devices like the BlackBerry:

The Blackberry is a wonderful device but it’s addictive, consuming and, for many people, completely unnecessary. We all like to think the world is moving faster and every e-mail needs to answered in minutes but it doesn’t really work that way if you step back from the fray. People who have Blackberrys need to discipline themselves to check their e-mail once an hour or once every few hours, and resist the unproductive and annoying urge to check all the time.

The other day I was having dinner with my wife at about 7:30 on a Friday evening. At the next table was a husband, wife, and two small children having dinner. The husband was checking his BlackBerry every few minutes during dinner.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop reading the paper and I just noticed a twenty-something man in a t-shirt, jeans, and ballcap pull out his BlackBerry and quickly check it, as if something urgent would be occurring at 10:30 on a Sunday morning. Of course I am typing on my laptop in that same coffee shop so perhaps I shouldn't be saying anything.

I'm a gadget person, and I definitely thought the BlackBerry was a cool device, but I have no desire to carry one. Those types of devices have created a culture of urgency where everything is critical regardless of its actual importance.

There are many people, such as salespeople, for whom a BlackBerry is beneficial. However, for most people it just becomes an obsession. The world is moving at the same speed as it always was. The email will still be there in 20 minutes so you might as well enjoy yourself now and then.

Finish your coffee and the paper first.

John Baird provides this analogy to describe carbon emission credit trading as a way to meet Kyoto targets:

"It's almost like saying around the world we've signed a protocol to all go on a diet and lose weight and instead of losing weight, we gain 35 pounds. But we somehow get an out by paying someone in Russia to lose weight for us. And by the way, they don't lose weight. This just compensates them for weight they lost 20 years ago."

Spending billions of dollars without reducing carbon dioxide emissions at all, even if you pretend it does, just doesn't seem like a viable solution.

And while I'm on my soapbox, it drives me crazy when people connect Kyoto and pollution. Kyoto is about reducing a particular greenhouse gas - carbon dioxide. We exhale it, and plants need it. It is not pollution. Reduced pollution is actually considered to be a contributing factor to global warming. Meeting Kyoto targets will not reduce pollution.

Via Fighting for Taxpayers.

Read/Write Web has provided and excellent index to the online video industry:

There are now so many companies vying to be the next YouTube, it's easy to lose track of them all. So let's take a look at the entire online video industry and categorize the major players. Our thanks to Ali Dagli of Savvian, for providing us a lot of the useful data listed here.

Tip of the hat to Good Morning Silicon Valley.

There are actually people who think that since it is illegal to deny the Holocaust, it should also be illegal to deny climate change:

Whoever thought that serious commentators would want it made illegal to have a row about the weather? One Australian columnist has proposed outlawing ‘climate change denial’. ‘David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial’, she wrote. ‘Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence. It is a crime against humanity, after all.’ (1) Others have suggested that climate change deniers should be put on trial in the future, Nuremberg-style, and made to account for their attempts to cover up the ‘global warming…Holocaust’ (2).

I'm not clear on how a historic event involving the death of millions of Jews can be compared to something that might or might not happen in the future. I'm also not clear on how stifling discussion on climate change can be a positive thing.

Tip of the hat to small dead animals.

The Liberal party was in power in Canada for 13 years, during which time they did nothing but talk about the Kyoto Accord to reduce greenhouse gases. During that time, carbon dioxide emissions actually increased between 25% and 35%. They had the responsibility to act, yet they did nothing but talk.

The Conservative party has been in power for 1 year. The opposition parties have banded together to pass a bill to force them to meet the terms of the accord. The saddest comment of all comes from the MP sponsoring the bill, Pablo Rodriguez:

Mr. Rodriguez said he is not suggesting how the Conservatives should meet the Kyoto targets. "They are in power. They wanted to run the country, so they have to take the responsibility," he said.

Mr. Rodriguez' party was running the country and had the responsibility, yet they did nothing. So let's suppose that the government falls based on this. How long would it take the Liberals to ignore the law if they regain power?

This whole debate has also brought out the worst math skills that I have even seen. I saw one article today that suggested that to reduce emissions by 25% in four years they merely had to reduce emissions by six percent per year. Actually they would have to reduce emissions cumulatively 6.25% per year everywhere, and assume no new emissions of any kind.

The example was given that one could merely reduce the thermostat by 1.5 degrees. However, one would actually have to reduce the thermostat by 1.5 degrees in the first year, and eventually reduce it by 6 degrees in the fourth year.

Let's be rational. Elimination one quarter of the entire country's emissions will be incredibly painful to the economy. Some might even call it economic suicide. It is disingenuous and cheap politics by the opposition parties to pretend that they can legislate the government to meet targets that they never intended to.

Here's my suggestion. Tell the Conservative party to call an election. Let the Liberals win. Let them increase the taxes. Let them stop oilsands development. Let them crush the economy.

But that won't happen, because the Liberals will just ignore the law. If they did nothing about Kyoto in 13 years, why would they start now?

Computerworld Windows expert Scot Finnie has switched from Windows to Mac. And he had a few choice things to say about the switch:

If you give the Mac three months, as I did, you won't go back either.

[...]

After living with the Mac for three months and comparing it with my Vista experiences, the choice is crystal clear. I've struggled to sort out my gut feeling about Windows Vista (see "The Trouble with Vista"), but the value and advantage of the Mac and OS X are difficult to miss. While I continue to work with Windows XP and Vista on a number of other machines, I am now recommending the Macintosh for business and home users.

Microsoft's marketing materials for a past version of Windows used the phrase, "It just works." But the only computer that tagline honestly describes is the Macintosh.

Via digg.

From Mark Steyn:

If it's hot, that's a sign of "climate change." If it's cold, that's a sign of "climate change." If it's 53 with sunny periods and light showers, you need to grab an overnight bag and get outta there right now because "climate change" is accelerating out of control.

The silliest argument is the anecdotal one: "You only have to look outside your window to see that climate change is happening." Outside my window in northern New England last week, it was minus 20 Fahrenheit. Very cold. Must be the old climate change kicking in, right? After all, December was very mild. Which was itself a sign of climate change.

Climate change has reached the point where shrill arguments have replaced rational discussion; where you are branded a heretic at the mere suggestion that there might even be something to discuss.

This very impressive and watchable video shows you how the web has changed, and how it is connecting us, and changing us.

Tip of the hat to David Weinberger.

The newest version of Bleezer is 0.9.8, and it supports the new Blogger, formerly known as Blogger Beta.

Configuring it is simple. If your userid ends with "@gmail.com" then it assumes that you have converted your blogs to the new Blogger. Otherwise it assumes that you are using the old Blogger.

My local paper, The Record, printed the following headline:

Nortel stock soars as 29,000 jobs cut

I imagine it would, considering that Nortel only has about 34,000 employees in total.They meant to say 2,900 jobs cut.

I was just watching last night's episode of "How I Met Your Mother" - on TiVo of course - and they recited a TiVo prayer to ensure that TiVo recorded the Super Bowl. The first line:

The power to pause live TV to take a leak is almost godlike.

Charlie Brooker of the Guardian hates Macs:

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

I like Macs. I use a Mac, having switched completely about a year ago. But I don't hate PCs or the people who use them.I can only assume that his missive is somewhat tongue in cheek.

I spent years building PCs, trying to get them to behave properly, just so I could get some work done. Switching to the Mac didn't just help me work better - it made me into an evangelist.As Mark Evans says:

Charlie, you’re not just dealing with a product; you’re dealing with a religion.

Daring Fireball quotes Bill Gates' response to a Newsweek question about similarities between Windows Vista and Mac OS X:

I mean, it’s fascinating, maybe we shouldn’t have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done. Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine. So, yes, it took us longer, and they had what we were doing, user interface-wise.

Iwonder if he actually believes himself?

When I was using a PC, if I updated my virus software and did a virus scan every day I might be ok. Since switching to a Mac I just do what I want to do. It just works.