There is one note on my calendar, it says “194”. I take it Barbarossa Day 2004 was no big deal in Doral, Florida. But I heard on the news about a massive strike in Canada by hospital workers. Remember, up there, essential services and civil servants are allowed to unionize, making for huge imbalances in wage levels. So yes, the hospitals can go on strike and they did.
I didn’t write it down, but I always felt there was something fundamentally wrong with “free medical” because it must be underwritten by taxation. It encourages people to run to the doctor for any minor ache and creates chronic hypochondriacs who rack up millions in costs. Of course, I know now, ten years later, the system is on the brink, but there is also another point I used to discuss more in the past.
That is the topic of comingling democracy and socialism. Those who are organized will take advantage of those who are not. The system in Canada is insane and unsustainable. In the USA, there is no huge bottom line of workers who can vote themselves raises, at least not on the scale this happens in Canada. Thus, the American downfall will be drawn out. But when Canada implodes, it will be practically overnight.
My workbook for this date also shows I began to take MP3 audio seriously around this time. The format had been around since it was popularized by Winamp in the late 90s, but I am very cautious about new music formats. So it was unusual that I chose to begin looking at MP3s. The main reason I did so was the small file size, not any belief that this or any other format would become the standard.
[Author’s note 2014-06-22: the MP3 format exploded because peer-to-peer sharing—you could download an MP3 in seconds, not hours. Also, other players became available other than the dreaded Winamp, which by the way tracked what you played. This is also where I began to disagree with the recording industries contention that every pirated file was lost revenue. This is utter nonsense. I, for one, would never pay for 99% of the “free” music I ever listened to.]
Here is a rare sight. This is a mountain in Chile, typical of the bleak terrain where nothing grows and the air is dry and cloudless. So, is that a cloud on the mountaintop? Nope. What you are seeing is a dynamite blast. You can see the access road zig-zag up to the top, where the blast signals the construction of the world’s largest infrared telescope. It was European-owned, but so quickly outclassed by American robotic probes that nothing much has been heard of it since.
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