Robert Paterson's Weblog

Teabonics

Teabonics

David Pescovitz at 10:19 AM Wednesday

Teabonics is a Flickr set of "signs seen primarily at Tea Party Protests (that) feature 'creative' spelling or grammar." (Thanks, Jody Radzik!)

via boingboing.net

Says it all

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

H&M Karl Lagerfeld - Cheap redefined!

via youtube.com

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Viacom sues YouTube on Copyright but was a big uploader and a buyer

For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately "roughed up" the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko's to upload clips from computers that couldn't be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt "very strongly" that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.

Viacom's efforts to disguise its promotional use of YouTube worked so well that even its own employees could not keep track of everything it was posting or leaving up on the site. As a result, on countless occasions Viacom demanded the removal of clips that it had uploaded to YouTube, only to return later to sheepishly ask for their reinstatement. In fact, some of the very clips that Viacom is suing us over were actually uploaded by Viacom itself.

Given Viacom’s own actions, there is no way YouTube could ever have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site. But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out. The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong.

Viacom’s brief misconstrues isolated lines from a handful of emails produced in this case to try to show that YouTube was founded with bad intentions, and asks the judge to believe that, even though Viacom tried repeatedly to buy YouTube, YouTube is like Napster or Grokster.

via youtube-global.blogspot.com

Isn't the corporate world a fun place and how they game the system

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

The Guergis Saga continues

Embattled junior Conservative cabinet minister Helena Guergis says she had no idea her office assistant has been sending pro-Guergis letters to local newspapers posing as a regular voter.

Guergis, already under fire for an airport security tantrum last month in Charlottetown, says her riding assistant has agreed the letter campaign was inappropriate and has apologized.

The assistant used her married name, rather than the maiden name she uses in her professional life, to send letters defending Guergis to newspapers in her Simcoe-Grey riding northwest of Toronto — without any hint that they came from a Guergis employee.

Liberal MP Wayne Easter notes that all cabinet members have a media clipping service that details every newspaper reference, so it is simply “unfathomable” that Guergis or her department didn’t know about the letters.

Easter calls it another embarrassment for the Harper government and says he can’t understand why Guergis, the minister responsible for the status of women, remains in cabinet.

The situation is also an embarrassing reminder of an incident involving the minister’s husband, former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer, who once apologized for allowing an aide to impersonate him for a Vancouver radio interview.

Jaffer was in the news last month after charges of drunk driving and cocaine possession were dropped in favour of a plea bargain conviction for dangerous driving and a $500 fine.

Guergis told the Commons on Tuesday that she had just spoken with assistant Jessica Craven and that Craven told her she had submitted letters to the editor under her married name, Jessica Morgan.

“We did discuss that it was inappropriate,” Guergis told the House.

“She apologized and assured me that it will not happen again.”

The minister did not otherwise comment on her aide’s behaviour.

via theguardian.pe.ca

What more can I say.....

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Help America's School Lunch Program Make the Grade - Health is affected by what we eat

Discussions about our health care system reached a fevered pitch recently in Washington, D.C. with Congress addressing a massive health care bill. Disagreements abound on various policy matters, but there is no question that our nation's health has deteriorated and health care costs have increased substantially and are not sustainable. We cannot continue accepting poor health and disease as normal, and depending on pharmaceuticals to treat preventable illnesses.

It is critical to promote healthier plant-based eating habits and to lower the risk of disease in the first place. Politicians and the mainstream media have been slow to address the importance of disease prevention; however, the concept is finally beginning to surface, at least in general terms. Shortly after the U.S. House of Representatives voted on the health care bill, an ABC News commentator spoke to a national audience about the need for "fundamental" change and discontinuing our "bad habits," and on CNN, Dr. Andrew Weil highlighted the importance of "disease prevention" and "health promotion." Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has planted an organic garden at the White House and is urging school children to exercise and eat more fruits and vegetables to combat obesity and other lifestyle related health problems.

Congress will begin discussing the federal school lunch program soon, and this provides an opportunity for parents and others concerned about our nation's youth to weigh in and to challenge a system that allows factory farms to profit by selling unhealthy food to children. Each year, the federal government spends more than $1 billion on animal products for programs like the National School Lunch Program. The Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act will prevent the federal government from spending any of this taxpayer money on products from animals raised in veal crates, gestation crates or battery cages. In addition, the Healthy School Meals Act would provide financial incentives to school districts that provide their students with plant-based food options and non-dairy beverages. By educating students about the dramatic benefits of adopting a plant-based diet for the animals, the environment and their health, this law would have a tremendous impact. Contact your legislators now and ask them to support the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act AND the Healthy School Meals Act.
Agribusiness will fight to maintain the status quo, but citizens also have a voice in our democracy, and if we speak up, we can make a difference. The future, individually and collectively, is in our hands.

via huffingtonpost.com

I think that the food train has left the station and that schools will be the place where Big Food will start to feel the heat.

It's ironic that in America, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, will make it illegal to use battery eggs in school - but here the local Mass Market Egg Families will try to use the Federal Regulator to protect them against real eggs.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Selling our House - A Place for Aged Parents and Adult Kids

by robpatrob

Do you have aging parents? Do you have adult children who are a bit lost?

Of course we love our parents and we love our kids but having them live with you……..

Robin’s parents came to PEI from Ontario in their late sixties, as we plan to move closer to our own kids now. At that time in life, your family trumps friends.

For several years they lived in a very nice apartment downtown. But as Frank grew weaker, he needed more care and Ann more help. The choice was a seniors residence or to have them come and live with us.

By this time both were in their early 70’s. It seemed wrong that they go so early to the gateway to dementia and death, a seniors home. So we built this 1,000 sf addition to our house. Close but separate. their own front door. We could lend a hand and be there in a flash if we were needed.

We were too late. Before it was finished Frank fell, broke his hip and died a few weeks later. Exactly the kind of event we were hoping to avoid.

Ann now widowed, moved in and lived with us for a few more years before her death. The choice again would have been to soldier on alone or to move into a home.

Many of us boomers share this story. Many of us have aging parents. Our “Wing” is designed for you.

It has beauty as you can see here and functionality. It is wheel chair accessible both from an access point of view but also inside with wide doors and a bathroom designed for a wheelchair.

You can see more pictures on the sales web site  (Property Guys).

What about adult children? These are uncertain times. Especially hard on our young. Our daughter Hope returned from 6 years of travelling a few years back. Re-entry to life in Canada was very hard for her. So she came to live with us. A common story. But while we all love our children and they us – well most of us and most of the time – living under the same roof as an adult child can be very stressful for all.

The wing again gave us that solution. Close but separated.

This is why I describe this place as a family compound – does this fit your needs?

via 673bunbury.wordpress.com

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Whole people build whole organizations - Joe Gerstandt | My choice of post of the day

We need to stop contributing to this problem and start building a new kind of social space for our work to be alive in.

We do a great deal to get in the way of people bringing their whole selves to work and we do a great deal to get in the way of people having true and organic connections to their work and this is a big part of what must change.  This is why we need freedom fighters.

We hire whole people, but it tends to go down hill from there.  Applicants are told about how people are our greatest asset, how creativity and honesty are vital, and we how we value the unique contribution of each individual.  Employees are bombarded with messages both implicit and explicit about fitting in, not rocking the boat and playing the game. Employees end up with truncated identities and trade their passion and ideals in for the rules to the game.

Continuing forward with organizational cultures that implicitly or explicitly proclaim that management has all the answers and that management owns the truth is not unlike clinging tightly to the idea that the Earth is flat.  This thinking is a fatal flaw in today’s business world and must be evicted. 

Business is simply too complex and too fast moving today for us not to be engaging the individual wholes of our whole workforce.  We can no longer drive around with the emergency brake on.  We have become very efficient at managing activity but we are still very sloppy and wasteful with talent, ability, potential and the intangible assets that each person brings with them.  The hearts and minds of a select few with select titles and select parking spaces are woefully inadequate for the challenge before us now.  We must create space for the hearts and minds of all.  We can afford nothing less than the fully stoked fire of our collective aspirations and abilities and this part of our journey cannot be navigated with spread sheets or flow-charts.

There will always be some conformity involved in joining a community or an organization.  There are some agreements involved in joining a social group, whether it is an organization, congregation, association or community.  We just need to push way, way, way, way back on those things…especially the implicit things that are baked into an organizations culture and its way of leadership.

This seems like a big piece of work and it is, but it is something that each and every one of us can contribute to regardless of our role or title.  There are a lot of things that influence, shape and contribute to a culture including our individual actions and relationships.  Here lies a powerful opportunity for us to take responsibility.    

This is not about our bosses.  This is about us and what we will do to take our work and our places of work back.

Be good to each other.

via ourtimetoact.com

So true - Our world is so complex now that one or two of us - no matter how smart we are cannot know enough to have the answers and a traditional organization cannot move fast enough to cope.

I think the issue is now survival. If your organization relies on only a handful of leaders to know what to do and if your organization has no agility. Your organization will die - die soon.

So the point now is not to be trendy and co-opt social media. "Look Ma I am using Facebook!" It is to look at the issues that are in front of us, the systemic unemployment, the demographic crisis, the peak oil potential, the possibility of war in the middle east, climate change, the ungovernability of America, the culture wars, the generational gap, the effect of the web on all work - and say

"Any one of these could kill my organization. All of them may act upon it. How can I organize to be able to adapt and cope?"

Your new strategy - Organize the survive "interesting/complex" times.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Who will be America's Horst Wessel?

Am I the only one who senses it might be America's turn to go nuts? I don't mean a family squabble, like the Boomer-Hippie-Vietnam uproar that was essentially an adolescent rebellion against bad parenting in the national household. I mean a genuine descent into madness, with the very high probability of persecution, violence, murder, and mayhem - all more or less sponsored by various authorities and institutions.

The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They're in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of "no" to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law. In the days since the passage of health care reform, they've gone as far as inciting mobs to violence against their fellow congressmen and senators - bricks thrown through windows, death threats made, coffins placed in the yards of their adversaries. One day soon, somebody with a gun or an explosive device, someone with a very sketchy sense-of-self, and perhaps a recent record of personal failure and humiliation, is going to sacrifice himself to become the Tea Party's first martyr by shooting up a shopping mall in some blue district.

via billtotten.blogspot.com

This week members of a Theocratic Militia were arrested. Their plan to kill policemen and so to set off a firestorm.

Who will be the new Horst Wessel - the hero of the new order?

If these men were muslim would they be a worry?

 

Many people like this seek martyrdom. They long for Armageddon. How close are we? What is the real risk?

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

The Egg wars may be back on PEI

Photo courtesy of Farm SanctuaryThere are two different kinds of chickens – one for meat consumption (broilers) and one for egg production (layers). Layer chickens have been genetically selected to provide maximum egg production but they do not grow fast enough or big enough to be raised for substantial amounts of meat.  Because the male layer chicks cannot lay eggs or produce a profitable amount of meat, they are considered useless by the industry.  After these male baby chicks are hatched they are immediately killed by a mixture of horrific methods including being thrown fully live and conscious into meat grinders to be fed to other livestock, suffocated in plastic bags, decapitated, gassed or thrown into dumpsters.  Over 300 MILLION baby male chicks are killed every year in the US.

The egg laying process is pure production.  Food and light are controlled by the farmers to shock the hens’ bodies into laying eggs faster.  Once the female layers have reached maturity, they are put into barns and deprived of food and light.  The lights are lowered, sometimes 24 hours a day, and the chickens are put on a low-protein diet and denied water for two to three weeks.  After this time period, the lights are turned on 20 hours a day so that the females think it is spring.  They are now fed high-protein feed and the egg laying begins.  This cycle of “forced molting” is repeated: another round of starving the birds to again trick their bodies into more egg production.  By controlling these aspects of “nature”, the industry can keep the birds laying eggs year round, ultimately producing two to three times the amount of eggs that natural egg laying cycles would generate.  After a year to year and a half a hen’s egg production eventually slows down and the hen is now considered ‘spent’.  It is cheaper for the industry to kill these ‘spent’ hens and start the process over with new birds.  Unfortunately, the fate of these chickens is not so different from the aforementioned male chicks.  These older hens are thrown alive into grinding machines to be used as feed for other animals or suffocated in plastic bags.  Another horrific disposal method involves bulldozing packed containers of live chickens into the ground, burying them alive.  Some of these ‘spent’ birds make it to the slaughterhouse and are used as low-grade chicken meat in pot pies and soups where the bruises on the meat can be hidden from consumers.

Photo courtesy of www.advocacy.brittanica.com

via healthandhappinessclub.com

I am hearing that having lost the first round, that the 10 families on PEI that raise factory eggs are planning round II.

Round II - The CFIA will be used to test the eggs being sold in the farmer's market. The regulator is the key to factory system.

The bar is set so high that the small producer cannot meet it. That is why we have so few slaughter houses and why they cannot make money in a small place like PEI. That is why an organic yoghurt producer cannot afford to sell their product.

The entire idea behind the apparatus is to protect us from the root cause of risk in the factory system. That is that the animals are kept in such a stressed condition that the risk is quite real.

Chickens raised like this - see above - have been pushed to the limit. If I did this to you, how would your health be?

So here is the deal that I think is fair.

If the CFIA are to inspect the flocks and the eggs of people that have 299 hens or less. Let us inspect the big barns.

How are the hens being treated? What is the medication that is being given?

Let's see the facts about the two systems and compare them.

What is their real concern?

I think that it is this. If there is a large a network of producers who have small flocks. Whose chickens live a real chicken life. Whose eggs are much better, then of course their system will lose.

We are getting close to the time when we will all have to think more about the inherent quality of our food. How it is produced and by whom. It's not really about the 10 egg producers - it is about our kids, our health and about the food security of our community.

Posted via web from Rob's posterous

Kotex - A Breakthrough in Advertising - The Truth - What a concept!

Here is the game changer. What if more applied this ethos to what they offered? Look also at how the woman in the ad was shot. Look at how Kotex has brought in bloggers via Facebook to help.

In today’s world what is the most scarce thing of all? Trust!

Being truthful earns it. The real new economy.

via fastforwardblog.com

Posted via web from Rob's posterous