You are what you eat, as an individual and as a community…

photo by a virtual unknown

This article is about food labeling as well as concerns regarding the affects of genetically modified foods and pesticides on our health. For your convenience, all links to external information in this article will open in a new tab or window. This will allow you to view that link and return to this article where you last left off.

I have just one question for you:

Do you believe that consumers should have access to all possible information on the origin of the foods that they eat?

Imagine a scenario where something in the food is making people sick or causing allergic reactions; but the origin and specific information about the ingredients of that food are unavailable. Doctors do not trace the illness to the food. That same food is served to you or your child in the hospital. Already weakened, the second dose proves fatal. Sounds unbelievable? It could never happen to you or me… but what if you were eating one of the subsidiary brands that repackages Maple Leaf meat products under a different label, before the connection was made?

Monday December 22, 2008

Originally uploaded by a virtual unknown

A few of my friends and I made the journey to Kensington Market in the biting cold to see the “[officially canceled] 20th Annual Festival of Lights“

A very large crowd assembled on the street and there were some lantern carriers and fire-spinners as well as a band; but no Olivia Chow and none of the officially organized spectacles.

A few more photos are posted on my Flickr here.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is refusing to provide files or information regarding the listeria outbreaks, citing “too many requests” for that information as the problem factor:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2008/12/19/listeria-cfia.html

I don’t know how I missed this one; but back in the spring of this year the Coordination of Access to Information Requests System (CAIRS) was decommissioned.:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/05/02/cairs.html

“It’s another example of the Harper government’s talk about accountability and transparency — they talk the talk but they don’t walk the walk,” – New Democrat MP Dawn Black

Things that have to be shared…

Here are some of the more interesting discoveries from the past couple of days..

Bank of Canada drops interest rate to 1.5% (lowest in 50 years): http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2008/12/09/bankofcanada.html?ref=rss

One for the nerds: http://xkcd.com/519/

A rap video about the TTC: http://torontoist.com/2008/12/i_get_on_the_ttc_now_slightly_more.php

My HP Laptop is back and fixed

I bought an HP DV2202CA about two years ago. It was my first personal laptop (I was weened onto them by having work laptops) and it has served me well until recently.

The battery is now at a point where it only holds enough of a charge to keep the computer on for about 10 minutes. I cannot specifically fault HP for that because in my experience, this eventually happens to all batteries.

About 2 weeks ago, the wireless adapter stopped working. I rebooted once and all of the sudden Windows no longer detected the presence of a wireless network adapter at all.  It turns out that this is a known issue with HP DV2000/6000/9000 series laptops.

Lucky for me there is a Limited Warranty Service Enhancement (click here for details) that extends the free-of-charge repair service from the standard of 1 year to 2 years on this particular problem. I dialed into the support line and they asked me about some of the symptoms and what I had tried on my own to remedy the issue. Once it was determined that my laptop had a faulty piece of hardware, they arranged to have packing material and a box sent to my address, along with a UPS label. It came in two days. I sent the laptop off and it came back 3 days later, fixed.

Since I backed up all my data and erased the hard drive (reinstalling the factory default programs) before sending my laptop off, I had no personal information on the machine while it was away. I do this out of paranoia. Because I no longer had anything invested in the hard drive of my laptop, I ended up formating and putting a copy of Ubuntu Desktop Linux 8.10 on the machine and it has been working flawlessly and much faster than Windows to do tasks like Email (in Evolution), web-browsing (Firefox), playback video (VLC), work with MS Office documents (OpenOffice), and manage my iPod (Amarok).

I am compelled to say that Ubuntu is quite ready to replace Windows for the average, non-gamer computer user. Community-made open-source software is surpassing commercial equivalents. This is one example of the Internet facilitating the organization of a massive project, with contributors dispersed all around the world (see today’s previous article on tools and industrial/information revolutions).

New tools can lead to revolutionary progress…

…but those tools have to be embraced and investigated. Then they have to be developed, applied, and customised. It’s a lot of work; but it pays off by reducing scalable workloads in the end. Interested?

So, I have this blog that nobody reads here at http://randomcrash.wordpress.com

I keep it so that I remain in practice with the best content management technology. The really incredible part about WordPress is not for the audience/readers; but for the content creators/authors. The reason I say this is because you need nothing more than a browser (actually, you can even make a new article post by sending an email). From Flickr, I can pick a photo of mine and there is a “Blog” button to click and it will let me type some text; when I click submit, it will post the image and text to my blog as a new article.

An industrial revolution is one in which a technology or idea comes about to increase productivity or otherwise potentially improve the quality of life of people on a broad scale. “Work hard” is gradually replaced by “work smart” as we begin to understand what sets the human mind apart from the brains of animals.

Post-partisan Perspective on the Canadian Economy

I am not into the politicking part of politics. I just enjoy the idea of theorizing on potential modes of problem solving. I suppose the down-side to that is I end up pissing off people no matter whether they consider themselves a Conservative, Liberal, or other.

* To the pro-coalition, pro-stimulus people:
We are not the United States. We should not throw any money onto a sinking business model that has already proven to be unsustainable. There needs to be a sophisticated plan devised and published for public scrutiny. A lack of accountability was the issue with allowing gigantic private businesses to determine the direction of our nation. That will not be repaired or changed if we simply hand over money to those same entities.

The most prominent plans call for funding from the government to be handed over to industries that were heavily invested in the US, and large operations related to the auto sector. This is the wrong way to distribute the funds. If we execute this plan, those funds will not be recovered by the government, on behalf of the taxpayers, and failing businesses models will still fold.

* To the pro-Harper, anti-stimulus peeps:
The economy is an ecosystem of interwoven and interconnected businesses. For example, if the dealership sells fewer cars, then the OEM automaker (Ford, GM, Toyota, etc) assembly line must produce fewer cars, while the parts manufacturers (Magna) reduce parts orders, subcontractors to parts manufacturers produce fewer components and checking fixtures, standard fastening suppliers sell fewer nuts and bolts, companies who repair/maintain/sell shop equipment (CNC, milling, drills, etc) are in less demand, the requirements for materials such as steel/aluminum/oil/energy/

plastic falls off.Stimulus is meant to fortify the nations economy to protect jobs from being lost by allowing one link in a large chain to operate at a deficit so that all the other links in the chain can continue to work. This can reduce the impact of a recession and be less expensive overall than allowing an entire vertical supply chain to fail and then support them through social assistance and employment insurance.