Here is a close-up of NeverWet. The initial test is to be my eBike handlebars. The way I must store the bicycle means the chrome is constantly attacked by moisture and develops a grainy rust pattern, that while easily removed, will eventually get through to the base metal. We’ve chosen the handlebars because they are not likely to be abraded, meaning this is a test of the exterior life of this product.
Another lovely day off. That’s my schedule, folks, I get paid to go out on Fridays. Needless to say, getting paid for that day has not been happening lately. The music business has been terribly eroded by DJs and Karaoke. I don’t know one person who prefers canned music to live, so it all boils down to club owners trying to save money. It is precisely the wrong thing to do, but it works well in the short run because it gives the illusion of lower expenses. I’ll explain how it works in real life.Say a club owner decides instead of paying the live band $200 on Friday night, he’ll bring in a DJ for $130. For the first few weeks, nothing else changes, the owner pats himself on the back for saving $70. Then begins the decline. The number of regulars begins to taper off as they find places that are closer, cheaper, or with live music. DJs cannot keep a crowd. Even if there are nothing but more DJs in the vicinity, the crowd will tend to spread itself out evenly over what is available. You can confirm that on your own--but I've seen it a lot.
The problem compounds as the club owner will desperately try almost anything to get his clientele back--except hire bands again. Anyone who thinks it is easy to get people back has obviously not tried it. It is easier and cheaper to get new people to come in and hope they’ll become regulars. But the one thing the owner won’t try is spending the money to get the bands back. The decline in business is gradual but the cost of the solution is rather instant. Often, the club can’t afford that any more. What you have left is a bunch of losing pubs that are pretty much alike. And before you conclude if the pubs are all the same, so just pick the one with the prettiest servers, you might want to know that pretty servers and bands underwent the same process of degradation. You'll see.
A day off doesn’t mean inactivity around here. I like my nice Zumba class, it keeps me limbered. Long time office workers like me can use that. The heaviest thing I lifted at work since 1981 was probably a paper clip. I got all the exercise I needed in other ways. Today was haircut day, instead I cleaned and weeded the yard, vacuumed the kitchen and workshop, generally the things guys like me like to put off. I will never be a yard worker.
How do you like that report about the post office snooping into your mail? They issue the postal workers with a card saying all mail to a certain address has to be taken to the supervisor for copying before it is delivered. The problem is, some guy got that card in his mail. Oops. Do what I do, assume all your correspondence is being copied and read, and don’t write down anything that could implicate you in the first place. Dumbest thing people post on the Internet: pictures with incriminating backgrounds.
Trivia for the day. Here is a video of the Spacex vehicle making a successful take-off and landing. Watch for a new round of laws looking to shut down the launching and deployment of privately owned satellites. Biometric identity manufacturers are using the largest human face database in the world, it is called “Facebook”. A NOVA study suggests that while most people feel they have a right to privacy, they feel that others do not. The danger, of course, is that ID methods brought in to stop criminals are quickly turned on the innocent. (For example, people are now fingerprinted when arrested instead of after they are convicted.)
Wait, there is more trivia. I’m not going to touch this one, but you can look it up yourself. Accidents really do happen more often to people who are assholes. Now I finally understand why so many people kept telling me my brothers were accident-prone. And according to anthropologists at Oxford, paranoia is largely an affliction of the less intelligent. The lower the IQ, the more the need to “identify” everyone around themselves. I can confirm that from my years at the phone company. That office was full of stupid people who were always complaining that my favorite answer to their questions was that it was “none of their business”.
ADDENDUM
Please, folks, do not send me comments that Canada is nicer than the USA. I delete them on the spot. Which country is better is largely a matter of what one is used to, and I am used to the USA. But to go a step further, I do not like Canada and I have valid reasons for not liking it. Only those who have never experienced real freedom would like or defend the Canadian system—and that means the majority of Canadians and nobody else. If you grow up thinking it is a perfectly normal lifestyle to stick your noses into everybody else’s business and can generally accept a lower standard in everything from food quality to wages, by all means, move up there.
I opt for freedom. It means more to me than “free medical”. What is free about paying half your income in taxes (hence the low real wages) so others can live like kings. Every person on welfare in Canada “makes” the equivalent of $75,000 per year. The “free medical” is so bad, the rich in Canada opt for private insurance or head for the border. As I said years ago, “Canadian taxes make food so cheap that a lot of people can barely afford it.”
I worked with Canadians for years, so I know what I’m talking about. People who try to get ahead in Canada are viewed with backbiting suspicion, as if one is trying to upset a well-balanced system. You need a permit to open any business even if they’ve never heard of it before; a permit that is little more than a document to alert the income tax department that you’ve shown initiative. They call themselves a modern country, but they have never invented or produced anything on a scale that justifies such a claim.
The police (R.C.M.P.) (locally known as the "Mounties") are a federal police force used as much to enforce government policy as to enforce the law. Canadian police regularly use Gestapo (tasing people to death) tactics and are far more corrupt than their American counterparts because Mounties cannot be sued for false arrest. Canada is the only “democracy” that has ever had ex post facto law (Section 33, Canadian Bill of Rights, specifically gives the Crown (the prosecution) the right to rewrite the law if they can't convict you any other way). Remember Charles Vernon Meyer.
Also, the Canadian system is designed to continually check up on you. Yes, I do mind constant red tape because I know it isn’t necessary. Every government department and bank in Canada behaves like a vigilante watchdog, ready to turn you in in an instant, and beware, the media is government controlled. Most Canadians know only the party line of any news story. Canada, although allowed as many political parties as they want, in reality has two. The Liberals and the Conservatives. The one in power at any time is the one who bought the most votes with the taxpayer's money. If you thought Mr. Obama invented that scam with his free cell phones and food stamps, wrong, it was perfected long ago by a Canadian called P. Trudeau. "Pierre" did it by expanding the civil service to 800,000 in a country with only 20 million people.
In theory, Canadians are “nicer” than Americans, but watch the hell out. It makes Canucks sickeningly complacent. They are too nice to vote against their ridiculous immigration policies, too nice to oppose the excesses of their own government, too nice to protest the outrages of their tax department, etc. No matter how right you are, a Canadian will never side with you if they even think they might be perceived as “not nice”. This is a Canadian phenomena so extreme you cannot possibly imagine it.
Canadians as a culture also have no problem lying. There is no general opprobrium built into the Canadian system nor into the Canadian individual as far as not keeping promises. (They just shrug their shoulders and walk away--they know you can't do anything. Just as American law protects the stupid, Canadian law protects liars by making it practically impossible to take them to court.) Lies are a significant daily part of Canadian life, and I’m not talking about little white lies at the office or to keep your kids in line.
Even if you sue, it can take years and thousands of dollars to succeed, only to discover the legal system does not make big awards for pain and suffering. That makes it very difficult in Canada to collect damages. This breeds an entire cheating mentality on a national level. Where an American might gouge you, the Canadian will cheat you because he knows you can’t sue him. If you catch him stealing your car, the Canadian will scream you were spying on him and the RCMP will listen.
And before anyone mentions crime, Canada leads the US in every major crime category except one--hand gun deaths. It only looks like there are 64 times as many handgun deaths in the US because the US refuses to delineate the murderers by race. If they did so, the white death rate is lower than Canada. Canada in general has 13% higher crime rates than the USA. Look it up for yourself. Furthermore, I believe Canadian crime rates are vastly under-reported because Canada has an arrest-the-victim policy in force. You are as likely to be arrested for reporting a crime as being the victim.
Remember that ex post facto law can reach into the distant past--Canada's Statute of Limitations can be over-ridden by Section 33.
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