Critical Brain Candy

There’s a new article up over at YouSustain called How To Become More Sustainable that turned out well.  I think it’ll give a lot of people some perspective on where to get started.

I really like this, as some perspective:

“The average passenger car, driven the average of 12,500 miles or 20,000 km, emits about 4 to 5 tons of CO2 each year. Heating and cooling the average home can generate up to 5 or 6 tons of CO2 per year. With just 2 items we’ve already accounted for half of a typical persons CO2 footprint, so we can see how large of an impact reducing some of those bigger items can provide.”

As always, please drop me any feedback, and if you like it, share it with friends!

A new study says BitTorrent piracy found by study to boost music sales.  Right.  BGR even points out the obvious way this study seems suspicious.

Look, everyone “pirates” stuff to some degree or another.  It’s become marginally acceptable in society, and I do believe there’s a spectrum on the morality of it.

But, at the end of the day, it is theft.  It’s a subtly different kind of theft than stealing a car, but something is still being taken against the wishes of the owner.  We all have our reasons for why we think it’s acceptable or not, but come on, I’ve grown tired of these weak attempts to justify it by saying it actually helps the person who’s being stolen from.  That’s a total douchebag argument.  ”I don’t respect you or your rights enough to pay you for the content you created, but here, I’ll do you a favour and take it for free, which is really helping you!”

Let’s all just be honest with ourselves and go back to business as usual.

I can’t believe it’s finally happened, but Obama’s declaration of support for same-sex marriage is huge. I read an interesting comment somewhere describing how this is a very good political move. The reasoning was that he won’t lose too many votes over this but will energize his base.

I agree that it’s a good move. I think he’s had a good first term, but the cold reality of US politics always deadens people’s hopes and expectations. With this one statement, even if he does nothing to change federal policy, I feel much better about him.

Apparently, Toronto’s esteemed Mayor Rob Ford got into a tussle with a reporter: Daniel Dale on what happened near the mayor’s home:

“At some point, perhaps 10 or 15 seconds into the encounter, he cocked his fist near his head and began charging at me at a full run. I began pleading with him, as loud as I could, with my hands up, for him to stop. I yelled, at the top of my lungs, something like, “Mayor Ford, I’m writing about the land! I’m just looking at the land! You’re trying to buy the TRCA land!” Instinctually, I also reached into my pocket to grab my dead phone. I then fiddled with my voice recorder, trying fruitlessly to turn it on so that I would have a recording of any physical violence.”

Now here’s a bit of commentary from Ford on the incident: Mayor Rob Ford won’t release video of incident with Toronto Star reporter.  What’s interesting is that this part doesn’t quite add up:

“I never laid a hand on the guy,” Ford said on 640AM radio Thursday morning. “I said ‘buddy, I am giving you two seconds to get out of here.’

“He said ‘Don’t hit me, don’t hit me, here’s my cell phone, here’s my tape recorder.’”

Hm.  You think someone, especially a reporter, would just offer up their phone and recorder if they weren’t being threatened?  Doesn’t sound too likely.