Christopher Mackay’s Blog

VIDEO: Are Plastic Water Bottles Safe? : DivineCaroline: “Are Plastic Water Bottles Safe?”

I threw out three expensive water bottles late last year — models which the manufacturer has since replaced with bottles featuring a different plastic — and switched to metal bottles by SIGG.

The thing that annoys me most about this sort of threat — however small it may be — is that manufacturers are automatically given a pass until something is proven, at someone else’s great expense, to be harmful.

Don’t look for this to change soon. And kudos to NBC for showing some of their sponsors’ products in this piece: I’ll bet someone took some heat for that.

Far from only censoring extreme graphic or suggestive content, this article in The Independent outlines some of the mundane things that were censored in Ireland in years past:

Confessions of an Irish censor: why Clark Gable, ‘Casablanca’ and Cliff got the chop - Europe, News - Independent.co.uk: “Such seemingly inoffensive titles as Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, Brief Encounter, The Quiet Man and On the Waterfront were also banned or heavily censored. In all, about 11,000 films were cut and about 2,500 completely banned.”

The article cites some of the earlier censors’ preoccupations, which included:

• dancing (special mention for the Rumba)
• kissing (an ‘unsanitary salute’!), and
• “the antics of Elvis Presley with his most suggestive abdominal dancing”

Fortunately, this kind of censorship is coming to an end in Ireland, but it clearly shows what ridiculous lengths people will go to control what other people think.

Hardly seems like the time to begin censorship in Canada.

YouTube - ZENN on the Rick Mercer Report: Zero Emissions, No Noise. Of course, there are emissions, they come from the power plant, not the car’s tailpipe (it doesn’t have one).

According to Who Killed The Electric Car?, though, even coal-fired power plants are radically more efficient than gasoline-powered cars, so it’s still a major net-benefit (6 fewer tonnes of carbon emissions a year per car, according to the president of Zenn).

Here’s something to be proud of: New Brunswick mentioned in an Esquire article about ‘Idiot America’:

• Greetings from Idiot America

Just to jump on the London 2012 logo-bashing that’s all the rage (see Daring Fireball and Under Consideration), I must say in defence of the designer, that this has all the hallmarks of design-by-client and/or design-by-committee. They have my sympathies. It’s hard to pretend you weren’t involved when you were paid something in the neighbourhood of $800,000 US (from the public purse)…

Gwynne Dyer (channelling Prof. Boris Worm of Dalhousie University):

A major human food source — the principal source of protein for one-fifth of the human race — is going to collapse in the next generation unless drastic measures are taken. The world’s fishing fleet needs to be reduced by at least two-thirds, bottom-trawling must be banned outright, and widespread fishing moratoriums for endangered species and even for whole areas need to be imposed for periods of five or even ten years.

Unfortunately, the minimum measures needed to prevent ecocide in the oceans would cause major short-term disruption and throw millions out of work, so they probably won’t be taken. It will be much easier politically to ignore what is happening now and let the collapse happen later, on somebody else’s watch.

And governments worry about terrorism.

This story on Slashdot suggests that email addresses used for ameritrade accounts wind up getting spammed. A quick visit to ameritrade.com shows that it’s owned/co-branded TD — Toronto Dominion — AMERITRADE. Have Canadians had similar experiences with online TD accounts? I’ve certainly never heard of any Canadian banks behaving like this…

This story (“Web site” baffles Internet terrorism trial judge”; Yahoo.com) has been making the rounds, typically accompanied by howls of laughter.

What’s so funny?

I admit, it’s difficult to grasp how anyone — especially someone presiding over a case on internet terrorism — could be so insulated from the everyday realities of modern life. But I must say I’m really quite impressed that Judge Openshaw is brave enough to admit this. Clearly, he has the courage to do what many, many people would not. Would those laughing at him prefer that he quietly sit back and pretend to understand things of which he has no experience? How could that be an improvement?

I applaud Judge Peter Openshaw.

First of all, who knew there were organic bees? (Then again, why wouldn’t there be organic bees?)

This story (out of PEI), which was #1 on Reddit today, “No Organic Bee Losses“, proposes some very simple causes for the Bee Colony Collapse issue.

Time to rename Dell ‘Beleaguered Dell’. This should be familiar to anyone who remembers 1997.

Obligatory links:

• Dell founder returns to lead firm | BBC.co.uk
• “My advice: Sell the company?