Politicians love to wrap themselves in the flag and say how wonderful the military is. Some of them love to send the military off on adventures in foreign lands where our young men and women are put into harms way, sometimes for a greater good, sometimes not. Given our current government's predilection towards the use of military force, I began to wonder how many of our politicians had the stones to do the job themselves, that is, how many of our MP's and PM's had served in the military in the past.

We started out with Stephen Harper having loads of credibility with the Canadian voter. Harper and Canada's "New" Government (TM. - Pat. Pend) took office with promises of being different, more open and accountable than the previous Liberal administration. What a difference a year has made. There have been so many different government positions on the treatment of prisoners handed to Afghan authorities by the CF, you need a score card to keep it all straight. The Harper government didn't know about it, then reports show up that they did. The government claims that there is no torture, then admits there is. There is is an agreement on prisoner inspections and there's no agreement. The merry-go-round just keeps going around and around. It's beginning to become clear why Stephen Harper needs to micromanage everything since it would appear that his ministers are incompetent based on the widely conflicting stories out of the mouths of cabinet this past couple of weeks.

For MPG given in US gallons, use this formula:




For MPG given in Imperial gallons, use this formula:




Both yield L/100km.

I've been thinking about how to get people to either give up their cars or to drive smaller cars. This is what I've come up with. To put it simply, the more fuel efficient your vehicle, the cheaper it is to register it annually. Also, to provide incentive to get older cars off the road, after a certain number of years, it starts to cost more to register an older car. Of course, since car registration is a provincial responsibility, you'd have to get the provinces to play ball, but one thing at a time. Here's what I propose:

I've noticed in my perusal of the blogosphere a call for an election from some opposition blogs. The reasoning is that since it's unlikely for Harper's Conservatives to win a majority, the Tories will drop Harper like a bad habit. There is some logic to this argument, as most parties only want a winner at the top. The argument is flawed though in that the Conservatives aren't most parties. Here's why I don't think that if the Tories only make another minority, or even move to opposition, Harper will stay.

The months of lies and half-truths are starting to catch up with the Harper Conservatives. It would appear that the media reaction to environment minister Baird's description of gloom and doom over the Kyoto Protocol is at best skeptical. The Canadian Press is reporting that few people are buying what Baird is selling. So why has the great Tory Spin Machine been unable to get people to believe that Kyoto will ruin the economy?

The Tories have announced their replacement for the Energuide for Homes that they call Ecoenergy Refit. The Harper Government claims that Canadians will get more money from the new program than the old, despite the program only being funded to half what the old program was. Since I did my energy refits under the old program, which was canceled from under me, cutting short the time I had to do the refits by six months, lets see if I could have gotten more money under the new system or the old system.

Some people are fond of order. Everything and everyone has it's place, and nothing should be allowed to upset that order. Laws are strict and not subject to interpretation for this crowd. Government is there to maintain the order and to prevent change. For people who think this way, democracy is not a form of government to be applauded. True democracy is incompatible with highly ordered government. In order for a democracy to work, every member of that society has to have a say, and since it's unlikely that every member of a society thinks exactly the same way as every other member, there's going to be some disagreement. This disagreement and dissent is healthy in a democracy. It is required for a democracy to grow and flourish. It does however tend to promote some chaos in the system as not everyone is marching to the beat of the same drum, much to the chagrin of the law and order crowd.

A perusal of the Privy Council website comes up with this little gem. It would appear that the Canadian Taxpayer shelled out $640 for getting passports for Stephen Harper, His wife Laureen and his two kids Benjamin and Dawn. A few questions come to mind. First, why am I, as a taxpayer paying for the PM's family's passports? I can see paying for Harper's, since his official duties require him to leave the country on occasion, but his family? Second, the cost of $640 for the lot works out to $160 per person. A quick look at the Passport Office's website shows the maximum cost of a passport is $92, for an adult. Add another $20 for a photo and you have $112 per person. So not only are we paying for passports for a government member's family, we're paying more than we as people off the street would.

After a week of cloudy, crappy weather, last night was finally clear. So I zipped on down to the RASC Calgary Centre's Wilson Coulee Observatory and took some pictures before the clouds started rolling in. I managed to catch M1, M42, M44 and M65 (pics below the cut). I've also uploaded full size pictures to the download section of this blog under astro-photos along with my other Messier astrophotos. Eleven down, 99 to go. Enjoy!