Dash For Power

Happiness can be as elusive a state to be in, as depression can be to get out off. We know it when we see it in others: a laughing couple, a tender holding of hands between an elderly couple, a child on a swing in the park,Within our own lives, it can be obvious as well: a meeting with a long unseen loved one, almost any time with a grand child, a sense of achievement at completing a task, the praise of one we respect, the smile of a loved one.

We wrote recently about the flourishing city of Richmond in Canada and the growing diversity of this city between Vancouver and the Seattle area, 130 miles to the south. In Richmond and Canada the immigration laws have encouraged skills and education and this has seen Richmond become 57% foreign born.

And while scuffles and misunderstanding have occurred, they have been eased by all doing their fair best to leave their Buddha in their home and be more a citizen of Canada in the outside world.Local predictions since 9/11 including my own earlier comments were that ever tightening restrictions and laws being passed by America on allowing needed new immigrants, the more that would begin to squeeze America and benefit Canada. And it has begun.

Recently Bill Gates appealed before the United States Senate to make immigration more easy rather than more difficult as it was choking his company in hiring enough new brilliance. His company has been opening new branch brain factories in Ireland, India, many places around the world.

But this time, almost in direct response to being rebuffed by the Senate and hearing the tightening of the border has only begun. So Bill Gates is overseeing a large new facility being built nearby in Richmond British Columbia, where the supply of skilled brains from China and India will continue to pour.

These new citizens of Canada are in the process of being hired by offices in Hong Kong or Madras and will fit in very well, pay their good taxes in Canada/ Canada and Richmond grows, while Redmond will struggle to find local legal residential brilliance.

Pity, that. The ancestor of my father was English, come to Canada; the ancestor of my mother was Irish, came to Boston, then to Canada. Then in Boston the signs said help wanted-no Irish need apply. It seems Boston has taken over a mind set that now says no foreigner need apply.

If they keep this up, the Statue of Liberty might need melting down to complete the Fence. Our oil passes through the border much easier than some of us, any more.

A television documentary that I just watched showed amazing examples of altruism between species not before recorded, as well as a quietly remarked series of scenes of adoption, or kidnapping between species. The most dramatic was of a battle between African baboons and wild dogs: at one point the camera shows a larger elder baboon grabbing a pup dog while the helpless parents howled and barked. The pup got away, the baboon grabbed him by the tail and dragged him, very roughly, him yelping, up and down over rocks and hills. The other baboons had driven the dogs back, we hear them howling from the hills.

At this point, the baboon drops the dog, who, confused, mingles with the baboon pups, who lick and play with him. The scenes cut ahead in time, we see the pup grow, being groomed by the adult baboons, which is now a huge indication to all to treat him well.

The scene jumps forward, the baboons and the grown wild dog are all on the hunt for wild game. The dog, now a mascot to the baboons, is all ears, and wonderful as an attack dog against wild dogs to bewilder them to retreat. Ralph, is that you? And you went over to the dark side?

It is apparently happening out there under our noses, even amongst bees, raiding and taking youth back to become willing slaves. This is ancient chemistry, and we wonder how we got the wolf to become a dog?

Apparently we grabbed him roughly by the tail, dragged him so he fully understood was boss, left him half dead for his pups to lick him back to life, and you have a fully trained new member of the work team.

And we thought we invented that.

You may have seen the United Nation data based World Clock circulating on the net:it shows their best estimates on a variety of changing statistics. To wit:

- the population is 6.64 billion people and that number is climbing each second.

- There are twice as many bicycles as automobiles being made yearly.

- Twice as many die from heart related disease than from cancer.

- Oil production continues to climb. All these numbers change before your eyes.

- So does the average temperature of the earth’s surface. Steadily.

Winter on one side is still summer on the other as we roll around heaven all day. Earth’s average temperature is 14.1 something ten digits over. And those last digits are merrily skipping upward as you watch. You do not need a Ph.D to see that those final numbers do not go up and down even once, they simply keep moving upward. So if the scientists say a rise in the earth’s temperature by one degree will bring the sea up to our knees, up by two degrees and we in coastal cities all get to live as if in Venice; the good news is we can count the time in that clock as it rises, and realize that is our time line for survival on our good ship lollipop. We are all in this together.

Derek Dashwood

There is an urgent need for wise stewardship of our good Mother Earth: not much grows in a dirty, dark, over heated Boiler Room.

The recent collapse of much substantive agreement out of the Bali Conference on the Environment leads to us needing to look at the basic issues: Global Warming, now seen by most science as a fact and being rushed forward by our human activities; and the Cost of slowing, stabilizing, and eventual reversing of our current spewing of toxins into the air, the oceans, the land in our search for new mineral riches and oil and gas to keep us from freezing in the winter nights. This battle puts the greatest polluters at odds: America, now almost and soon surpassed by China, then India, are the world’s worst polluters. China wants technical help from the west to clean up it’s act, and America refuses. However, America is not the only advanced nation with highly skilled plans on how to reduce pollutants, even if in the short term America does not cooperate about patent rights, etc.

But it is right that we all cooperate on such an overwhelmingly mutual issue: India’s burning of fossil fuels for cooking for a billion people has been shown to have it’s ashes whirled around the earth in a way they are landing on Arctic ice and heating the ice by its black absorption leading to the likely demise of the polar bears. China’s heavily polluted air blows directly across the Pacific, darkening the forests and lungs of America and Canada on their dirty way around mother earth. We all need to cooperate in this, folks, or we all wear filters on our face as many do in Chinese cities now. It’s a bit as if Global Warming is our new world survival war, we all need to work on this together. Denial works for ostriches. Perhaps. Unless there is a hungry lion studying your fleshy backside. Time to wake and observe, orient ourselves, make some sensible decisions, and start to act on them. While we have time.

Derek Dashwood

Jobs, Jobs, Jobs. Coming now in the oil patch, to re build America’s pipelines.
Many more millions of tons of oil and gas, shale, oil sands, coal deposits, and other flammables are being extracted from the soil under America than are being discovered for new supplies. Since 1859, with Drake in Pennsylvania, and 1907’s Spindle Top in Texas, oil, abundant; never ending oil from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Gulf offshore all required larger refineries which over the past century have been built, rebuilt, added on to between Houston to New Orleans, even as all existing oil and gas fields are sucking their final steel straws near the bottom of these fields.
Now, it requires massive pumping of water to extract the final deposits, and is happening all over America. The once black gold Texas oil refineries are now energy importers, as is all of America. While we watched Dallas in those days, JR could almost complete his deals with local supplies, but you recall he’d be nervously on the phone about the Venezuela oil delay. Ah for the good old 80’s. Now Venezuela hates America and wants to divert their oil. You may know that the recently re elected President of Venezuela is amazing us all, very similarly as is happening in Russia and a number of other oil states under control of a strong man, squeezing the supply: or making noises about it.

Venezuela has recently virtually driven the major oil giants out of the massive oil fields in Lake Maracaibo, but now the vaster oil sands-like the Canadian fields, equal to Saudi Arabia’s fields, are now government property. Almost all state oil companies drop in production for years after a take over from a private oil company such as Exxon, Shell, Total. Venezuela, you may know, has just negotiated special oil prices for America’s strategic competitors, particularly Cuba and China. Venezuela wants to redirect oil for America, except for some of his socialism benefits to people in poor communities in America. So huge oil refiners along the Gulf Coast, taking whatever oil from whatever unstable place, Nigeria, new African deposits. While the wars go on.

So where does that bring us to? Blame Canada. Or, much more likely, thank God for Canada. A peaceable Kingdom right next door that talks your same language (mostly), values, work ethic, religious freedom. This good news for young people, is how many trained people are soon going to be needed as the elders retire. If you are in any situation whereby you realize you could dove tail your life into this gusher of money invested in people and equipment to build this, you could help make differences to our mother ship earth. Each generation is more aware of the need to combine energy extraction with conservation and putting things back the way they were r even more park like.

So be aware that hundreds of thousands of people will soon be needed. Canada is in the process of increasing its daily oil production from one million to five million barrels of oil, and most of this will flow to the United States, finally allowing America a secure fuel supply next door for many years to come. Two new pipelines are now being proposed by several major energy groups, partnering with others who will be vastly busy the next ten years. Our Canadian portion of this new network will run from refineries in Alberta, cross the prairies and enter into Minnesota, to rebuilding refineries near Chicago.

Here, the flow of oil that always flowed from Texas to all over the north and east will be reversed. Canadian, not Texan oil, will flow from north to south. Canadian oil will plug into those pipelines, and within several years oil will be flowing south through Minnesota, past Chicago, down the Mississippi to the Gulf at New Orleans. And then over to Houston. Then these will maintain the west to east flow from Houston to New York City. And thereabouts. This will take years and is happening quietly, as is the Canadian way. Don’t you think we should talk more about this next decade, and with China and India on the rise, how will this evolve? This should be assuring, good news. A good thing.

Derek Dashwood

Jobs: Jobs: Jobs coming in the oil patch, to re build America’s pipelines.

Many millions of years of oil and gas, shale, oil sands, coal deposits, kerosene and other flammables have been extracted from the soil under America and the world in many ways for centuries. Since 1859, with Drake in PA, and 1907’s Spindle Top in Texas, methane, oil, abundant coal came from Pennsylvania following the Appalachians; never ending oil from Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Gulf offshore all required larger refineries which over the past century have been built, rebuilt, added on to between Houston to New Orleans, even as all existing oil and gas fields are sucking their steel straws near the bottom of these Texas basin field, massive pumping of water to extract final deposits is happening here, in once black gold California is now an energy importer, as is all of America. While we watched Dallas in those days, JR could almost complete his deals with local supplies, but you recall he’d be nervously on the phone about the Venezuela oil delay. Ah for the good old 80’s. Now Venezuela hates America and wants to divert their oil.

You may know that the recently re elected President of Venezuela is amazing us all, very similarly as is happening in Russia and a number of other oil states under control of a strong man, squeezing the supply: or making noises about it. Venezuela has recently virtually driven the major oil giants out of the massive oil fields in Lake Maracaibo, but now the vaster oil sands-like the Canadian- are now government property. Almost all state oil companies drop in production for years after a take over from a private oil company such as Exxon, Shell, Total. Venezuela, you may know, has just negotiated special oil prices for America’s strategic competitors” particularly Cuba and China. Venezuela wants to redirect oil for America, except for some of his socialism benefits to people in poor communities in America. So huge oil refiners along the Gulf Coast, taking whatever oil from whatever unstable place, Nigeria, new African deposits. While the wars go on. So where does that bring us to? Blame Canada. Or, much more likely, thank God for Canada. A peaceable Kingdom right next door that talks your same language (mostly), values, work ethic, religious freedom.

This good news for young people, is how many trained people are soon going to be need as the elders retire. If you are in any situation whereby you realize you could dove tail your life into this gusher of money invested in people and equipment to build this, and some to maintain and upgrade forever. So be aware hundreds of thousands will soon be needed. Canada is in the process of increasing its daily oil production from one million to five million barrels of oil, and most of this will flow to the United States, finally allowing America a secure fuel supply next door for many years to come. Two new pipelines are now being proposed by several major energy groups, partnering with others who will be vastly busy the next ten years. Our Canadian portion of this new network will run from refineries in Alberta, cross the prairies and enter into Minnesota, to rebuilding refineries near Chicago. Here, the flow of oil that always flowed from Texas to all over the north and east will be reversed. Canadian, not Texan oil, will flow from north to south. Canadian oil will plug into those pipelines, and within several years oil will be flowing south through Minnesota, past Chicago, down the Mississippi to the Gulf at New Orleans. And then over to Houston. Then these will maintain the west to east flow from Houston to New York City. And thereabouts. This will take years and is happening quietly, as is the Canadian way. Don’t you think we should talk more about this next decade, and with China and India on the rise, how will this evolve? This should be assuring, good news. A good thing.

Derek Dashwood

Another study confirms anecdotal neighborhood gatherings: he tends to drive to and from work 80 per cent of the time unless he stops for a coffee, or she has given him a list, while she multi tasks more to and fro. She picks up or drops off the kids, grabs a coffee, and the laundry, shops for supper before rushing home to make it. This most recent study showing this is from a recently released Statistics Canada report. The study examined trip chaining- the practice of shopping at multiple points during a single car trip- and found that 45 per cent of all the car trips men make involve just one stop, compared to only 39 per cent of women who do so. On more complex trips involving three or more stops, women drivers outnumber men by a ratio of about 3 to 2.

That doesn’t surprise Elizabeth Ridley, a couples therapist and lecturer at the University of Toronto. “Much of this could be attributed to the kinds of traditional arrangements that still exist in many household. The woman in the house still has a shopping list in her head that’s three times as long as the man’s. She’s still the list keeper. More men are willing to do the grocery shopping these days, but often it’s only when a woman has given him a list”.

It could be also that women are more eco-friendly, and in their car chaining they cut down on overall car exhaust emissions by chaining. So, it leads one to realize this is one other way you women take the leadership in making our mother earth more liveable, while sometimes the men open more coal mines and don’t help enough at home. More cooperation ever between men to women is still needing some work, gents. You did take the garbage out: your act still needs work.
Derek Dashwood

Some health and death issues we think we know, we don’t. The British Medical Journal reviewed many long held beliefs and judged them on the scientific merit of each. Shaving does not make your hair grow back faster. Humans don’t use just 10 per cent of their brains. We don’t need to drink eight glasses of water a day. Two American researchers looked for data to prove or disprove many long held beliefs. Reading in dim light does not ruin your eyesight. Turkey makes you less drowsy than pork, and about the same as chicken and ground beef, based on it’s amount of tryptophan. Any big holiday or feast involves over eating, and since turkey is the favored dish for thanksgiving and Christmas, it takes the blame.

The mantra that people should consume eight glasses of water a day appears to have originated in a 1945 recommendation from the American Nutrition Council that said people should consume this equivalent. Lost in the report that most of this water could be consumed by eating plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables, that coffee and tea, even colas, could be included. The myth that humans use only 10 per cent of their brains “goes against everything that you learn in medical school”, says Dr. Rachel Vreeman, co-author of the study. None of the different brain imaging studies reviewed show any gaps or inactive or dominant areas of the brain. This myth may have begun in the early 1900’s by motivational speakers who wanted to inspire their followers to try harder in their reach for divine wisdom.

Hair and fingernails do not keep growing after death. After death, the body begins to dryand skin pulls back and retracts, making hair of fingernails more obvious. Actual growth of hair requires a complex hormonal regulation notsustained after death. Mobile phones are not dangerous around hospitals: the Mayo clinic found no evidence of harm or death from has been found in cell phone use. The authors say doctors need to constantly evaluate “the validity of our knowledge”. This report by Sharon Kirby for CanWest News Service. Some health news is good to learn. Or un-learn.

Derek Dashwood.

Winning fighter pilots have this phrase, George Stalk reported last month in the Globe and Mail, and he further elaborates on this behavior that separates winners who twisted, turned, sped then braked until they saw their enemy combatant shoot past them in horror, get him square in front, line, fired, and spin away quickly from his brother getting a bead on you from behind, swing wildly out, circle and began again. This was the classic dog fight and has rather gone out of fashion at the present, more our side’s space age jets being fired on by their ground to air missiles from isolated retreats. At any rate, you might want to remember their mental agility as well as their physically perfectly shaped bodies make them men among men, our chosen best, and their plan is”

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act.

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Observe:
Across most businesses, time spent to complete a service and deliver to the customer is only a fraction of time spent in less productive ways to make this happen. During the 95 percent of the time a product or service is not receiving value while in the value system, the product or service is waiting. The Observation: companies that attack the consumption of time in their value-delivery system experience remarkable performance improvements.

Orient:
The waiting time has three components, the “3/3 Rule”. Time is lost waiting for for:
1. completion of the batch a product is part of:
2. completion of the batch ahead of the batch;
3. management to get around to making and executing the decision to send the batch to the next step of the value adding process.

Generally the 95 to 99.95 percent of time lost divides almost equally between the three categories. The Orientation: Growth rates of three times the industry average with two times the industry profit margins are achievable.

Decide:
Several recent articles deal with several Finnish manufacturers of wood products from the woods to refined products, and how they have fended off inexpensive Asian labor and high duty from the vast Russian forests nearby and close to them. Yet they deliver bargain printer paper to us in Canada and America. How they can do this and make huge profits, we discuss in a series of articles coming.

Act:
This quick response time to specific orders from customers, and their streamlined systems that had the unions cooperate with the forest giants to shut small, isolated, unproductive mills, with government and corporate cooperation helped re educate and find new jobs for those affected: all found better jobs in a more central town where the most up to date mills, or cell phone factories keep a northern people living a high standard of living, and adjusting, as change happen, forests regrow, Finns adapt. We could learn from people who long ago chopped down all their trees, have learned to nurture them, OODA loop them back to trees, husbandry and wifery, OODA works.

Derek Dashwood