Friday Free For All – Dec. 23rd, 2016
Friday, December 23, 2016 @ 12:00 AM
It’s that time again, when we open the comments to hear what’s on our mind.
It’s time for the Friday Free for All.
You pick the topic, but please, obey the three simple rules:
Keep it clean
Keep it legal
No Bullying.
Please also try to keep your comments brief. Writing long winded posts may well be a waste of time as people scroll past them because they simply are too long. Also, try to limit your number of posts, as too many differing entries on a variety of issues can hijack the conversation.
Comments
The days are getting longer. (:
Yes, the winter solstice was the 21st this year, after that the days get longer
So how many hours are there today?
I always thought it was the daylight was getting longer. But, I could be mistaken.
;-)
The days are getting longer. By the end of the century each day will be 1.7 milliseconds longer than now. (:
Some of us understood that day refered to daytime or “the part of the day when it is light; the time between sunrise and sunset” (by definition)
For those who are panic shoppers in the last few days leading to Christmas while you provide me with endless entertainment value it is important to remember just because you are last minute shopping it doesn’t give you the right to be an idiot behind the wheel because you are in a hurry. Take your time the store will still be there be courteous you might actually surprise yourself and most importantly stay safe you really don’t want to spend Christmas in the hospital or in a lovely scented bag.
Be there for your family, loved ones or your animals they want you to be there for them too.
“A Butler’s Market” on 4th Avenue is open tomorrow for all the last minute shoppers. I checked it out last weekend and was very pleasantly surprised at the variety of unique stores. Well worth the time, even just to browse.
Poor Santa. :(
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/12/20/forecast-north-pole-to-warm-50-degrees-above-normal-thursday-near-melting-point/
Man, yesterday when I spent a few minutes in the superstore, I thought everyone must have gotten hungry at the same time! Ha, ha.
Have a wonderful relaxed Christmas everyone!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone! or Happy Holidays everyone! which ever fits.
I see the city has been racing around putting up the bike lane signs.
and then plowing the sidewalks and filling the lanes in with snow.
Do we resume that the lanes are important in the winter for snow storage?
I guess the lanes will only be important when someone in on city council figures they should be. Like when they can convenience motorists the most or they can fine or tow them..
Good question bcracer! Do we ignore the bike lanes in winter? Maybe from November until February the bike lane rules should not apply
don’t need too, use the roads.
Maybe the bike lanes could be flooded and people could skate to work? Unfortunately I can’t take credit for this idea, it was actually an Edmonton City councillor that suggested this for Edmonton.
Merry Christmas everyone, even you beinghuman/JGalt.
Bike lane lines are being driven over as traffic picks the shortest route around corners usually but along double lane straight stretches as well. Can see half the bike paintings where traffic has cleaned the snow off
That is actually the intention. Have you noticed that the markings are broken at intersections for that reason. Problem is, they are not long enough.
Remember the rule, solid lines are not to be crossed. Broken lines can be crossed as long as one ensures that their is no traffic behind … thus the purpose of side rearview mirrors, to catch the blind spots. I am sure that failure to do so is the cause of many car-bike crashes in those cities where they actually have significant bicycle traffic.
Not corners at intersections but corners where the roadway swings left and right like Ospika has. Even roads that are straight the right lane track is inside the solid white line.
Do we just ignore the traffic lines similar to parking lots where it is a free for all once the snow hits? Spruceland is an absolute zoo with cars being buried by parking three deep, the middle guy has to wait for the others to finish shopping so he/she can get out of the parking lot.
“Remember the rule, solid lines are not to be crossed. Broken lines can be crossed as long as one ensures that their is no traffic behind … thus the purpose of side rearview mirrors, to catch the blind spots. I am sure that failure to do so is the cause of many car-bike crashes in those cities where they actually have significant bicycle traffic”
==========================
This has indeed been an issue here. There have actually been a couple of fatalities as a result of collisions between vehicles and bike lane traffic. It’s to the point now that many serious cyclists advocate NOT using the bike lanes, because they feel safer driving on the streets with normal vehicular traffic.
I recall one instance where I was driving down a road, with a bike lane travelling the same direction on my right. I was going to turn right into a parking garage (so I had to cross over the bike lane), but saw an approaching bike in the lane so I yielded to them.
There was a truck driving down the same road I was in (coming towards me) and he was going to turn left into the parking garage. He couldn’t see the bike approaching because my truck was blocking the view of the bike lane and while I was stopped waiting for the bike to pass, he thought he’d just cut in front of me and turn into the parking garage. Maybe he thought I was being courteous and letting him go ahead of me, I have no idea.
As soon as I saw what he was going to do, I blazed on my horn, screamed and waived my hands, and managed to get him to stop right in front of me before he entered into the bike lane. A split second later, the bike passed by. Had the truck not stopped, there would have been a catastrophic collision between the truck and the bike. It really scared me at the time as everything was moving in slow motion and I could just see what was coming.
Whoever is designing these bike lanes needs to be extremely careful. It’s great to promote cycling, but putting these lanes in less than ideal places or relying on drivers to unlearn decades of driving habits (who normally checks for traffic passing them straight through on the right when turning right?) can have tragic consequences.
Merry Christmas all and a Happy New Year.
Have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Years from my family to yours.
Live long and prosper
Strange, this unusual and interesting news event didn’t get any coverage from the mainstream media. I wonder why.
———————————————-
We know the northern hemisphere has been getting colder, for example we reported earlier this week that the USA was colder than any time last year with an average temperature of 16 degrees F. It isn’t just the USA, in northern Africa, reports suggest that it is only the second time in living memory that snow has fallen on the Sahara desert. The last record is for February 18, 1979, when the snow storm lasted just half an hour.
Snow falling on the Saharan mountain ranges is very rare, let alone on the sandy dunes of the continent’s largest desert.
Amateur photographer Karim Bouchetata says he took the incredible pictures of snow covering the sand in the small Saharan desert town of Ain Sefra, Algeria, on December 19. The unforgiving red dunes looked pristine and picturesque.
———————————————————-
Photos at ht tps://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/21/snow-falls-in-sahara-desert-first-time-in-37-years/
CNN covered it. The Telegraph covered it. ABC News covered it. The Washington Post covered it. CTV news covered it. And on and on and on…
I din’t see it, though I do watch/listen to CBC, CTV, Global and CKPG. Lots of global warming articles and columns in the Citizen around that time but not mention there either.
I only listen to CBC, CTV, Globull and CKPG long enough to get a news overview. Actually Globull I dropped a long time ago. The Citizen, cancelled that years ago mainly because of their very biased climate reporting. Then there is the heavily biased reporting when it comes to politics, no neutrality what so ever.
Gotta love how Trump messed with main stream media, it was beautiful.
The media wonders why they are being dropped for on line information.
“We know the northern hemisphere has been getting colder, for example we reported earlier this week that the USA was colder than any time last year with an average temperature of 16 degrees F.” I call BS. Maybe 16*C, but even that would be too warm for an average US temperature.
“In 2015, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.4°F, 2.4°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year in the 121-year period of record for the CONUS” https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/national/201513.
“We know the northern hemisphere has been getting colder, for example we reported earlier this week that the USA was colder than any time last year with an average temperature of 16 degrees F”. I call BS. An average temperature of 16*F? No way, that’s an average yearly temperature of about -9*C.
“In 2015, the contiguous United States (CONUS) average temperature was 54.4°F, 2.4°F above the 20th century average. This was the second warmest year in the 121-year period of record for the CONUS. ” ncdc.noaa.gov
New official data issued by the Met Office confirms that world average temperatures have plummeted since the middle of the year at a faster and steeper rate than at any time in the recent past.
The huge fall follows a report by this newspaper that temperatures had cooled after a record spike. Our story showed that these record high temperatures were triggered by naturally occurring but freak conditions caused by El Nino – and not, as had been previously suggested, by the cumulative effects of man-made global warming.
The Mail on Sunday’s report was picked up around the world and widely attacked by green propagandists as being ‘cherry-picked’ and based on ‘misinformation’. The report was, in fact, based on Nasa satellite measurements of temperatures in the lower atmosphere over land – which tend to show worldwide changes first, because the sea retains heat for longer.
ht tps://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/12/12/met-office-data-confirms-record-drop-of-global-temperatures/
I don’t really care what happened from year to year. Show me the long term trend.
Exactly NMG. Weather is not climate. Go Sens !!
The long term global trend is all that matters. Scientific predictions for 2017 are that it will be the warmest year on record.
How long of a trend do you want? If it’s 20,000 years the trend is warming drastically. If it’s 10,000 years it’s cooling. If it’s 2000 years it’s cooling. If it’s 1000 years, the trend is cooling. If it’s 500 years the trend is warming. If it’s 20 years the trend is stasis, neither cooling nor warming.
So which one do you want?
Last week I posted that a photo that I personal took of Lake Louise and the Victoria Glacier in Sept/2015 showed slightly more ice than what is seen in a photo taken by a noted photographer in 1909! As I said last week, looks like they had global warming in 1909!
So, let’s go completely overboard over “climate change” now, even though I have seen proof positive that things were worse in 1909 than they are now, at least at Lake Louise!
Merry Christmas everyone, May there peace in your heart, and be together with family and friends.
We sure don’t get the snow we used too. I wonder how the snow removal budget is doing?its a good thing it rolls over now, instead of making it smaller next year
Don’t think it rolls over, they manage to spend it all…by sending everyone out when there is no snow.
You got to admit the spark show off the blades of the plow trucks at night is quite impressive.
He spoke, lotus land got our snow.
That’s nice
Energiewende now has a new site/blog/etc. energytransition.org . It has a more global veiw . Also India has just announced that they will get 60 % of their electricity from renewables within ten years . Their first commitment is close to 2 billion dollars for transmittion lines for the rapidly growing renewables fleet . They are not alone . We will gain from this in the form of copper demand .
Strangely Canada is featured on the front page . Go figure ! Or are they just having a laugh ?
Been into the eggnog a bit early eh? Merry Christmas Ataloss.
Best of the season to all my friends in George. Its been awhile since I have said hallo. It’s a rainy day in Abby but believe it on not the sun will shine on Christmas day.
I may as well take this festive season to remind those that have been telling me of the bad air quality in Abby . Some clown has refereed to Abby as oderford or some such stupid name.
I want to remind those that make these stupid remarks that Abbotsford has “ one” air quality monitoring saltation and I ask you how many there are in the famous city of Prince George maybe four or five ? And what does that tell us That PG probably has the poorest air quality in our province.
Your so smart that when you sit in the machine room, bleach plant and steam plant on your stupid little phones during working hours to spew all this crap of the poor air quality in another City.
Your so smart that you have thousands os arable acres of land in your area but you depend on the Fraser Valley to provide you with such a common food as milk and your vegetable.
And sparrow keep you stupid remarks about my age to yourself. Yes I am older but your life span will never have the joys I have enjoyed during mine and that I continue to have.
So have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
*you’re
Thought you had a snowfall warning today
What an absolute self serving load of crap. You come on here and constantly call down PG, but you get a bit of backlash and you cry like a baby.
Do us all a favor, enjoy your life is the horrible lowermainland and FORGET about PG. IF things are so bad here, why you constantly sticking your nose in other peoples business?
Oh and horrible lowermainland? Yup, lived for for 5 of the worst years of my life. The rampant racism, crime, drugs and idiots made it intolerable. Maybe thats why you enjoy it so much?
“The rampant racism, crime, drugs and idiots made it intolerable.”???
Are you sure you are not describing Prince George?
Retired been dipping in the egg nog again eh!
Your full of it.
Cheers
I view them as empty of ideas and dystopian in their hopes . These are people that have never learnt to play the hand delt them to the best of their ability . Or is it a lack of ability that gives them the lack of vision . The less the merrier ? Very strange views .
Ataloss, you never ever fail to disappoint me with your comments!
You ALWAYS descend into personal attacks on whoever dares to disagree with your UTOPIAN view of the world! I have to tell you that most on this site except maybe BH who shares your opinions and your disdain for others are getting sick and tired of your superior attitude!
Get the “F” over yourself and perhaps figure out that people do in fact have attitudes and opinions that differ from yours!
And on that note…Merry Christmas to the rest of you…including Retired, and his twisted attitude towards all things PG
Ataloss descends to the use of personal attack and ad hominem because he has a dearth of evidence to back his opinions.
” use of personal attack and ad hominem ” thanks for the laugh !
You’re welcome. We know you for what you are.
I’m very glad to not disappoint you . I know how hard it is to accept that not everyone is unsuccessful, insecure and not making gains . As for getting over myself ? Being successful , financially secure and making gains daily precludes that notion . I resently had a conversation with a guy that told me everyone one gets GIS payments . I could not get him to understand that we didn’t qualify to receive it because everyone he knows gets it . It’s just the same with reading material. Be very careful what you read because you become what you read . Other than this bs I only read books from the best and brightest minds in the world .
I guess its ok for you Bush Bunny’s to make derogatory remarks about the community I live in but when I give you some facts they are twisted. Go crawl back in your hole.
Cheers
NyteHawwk states; “You ALWAYS descend into personal attacks on whoever dares to disagree with your UTOPIAN view of the world!” Now that funny coming from someone who is obsessed with bum holes; “their sphincter tightens up so tight you would swear they were visiting the proctologist!”
My best Christmas wishes goes out to the more than 4,000 people in our city who are lined up at our food banks each month. In a province everyone thinks is doing so well, we sure have a record number of poverty stricken people, especially children. Some day, when we get a government in that actually cares, things might change for you all.
Merry Christmas!
4000 is an interesting number, however unless you can verify that number with facts, I have to call BS.
It’s actually 4,300… I rounded down.
“We have about 1500 families in Prince George each month who rely on the food bank” says Glasgow. That translates to about 4300 people says Glasgow “The sad statistic on that is that about 43% of those using the food bank are under the age of 16.”
ht tps://www.250news.com/2016/05/11/food-drive-collects-more-than-2-tons/
In other words, imagine the entire population of Vanderhoof, BC … every man, woman, and child in that community relying on the foodbank in our city on a monthly basis.
Hey Christy Clark, all we want for Christmas as a Poverty Reduction Plan!!!
Ataloss is without a doubt one of the most persistently stunned posters on this site. Pick any topic and you can count on …well …ataloss.
Ataloss I am still waiting on the details of your wonderful free energy solar system.
Germany about the highest priced electricity in Europe, yep real successful. People having to decide between eating or heating, can’t afford both. Same thing happening in Ontario and coming to Alberta.
India 60% renewables well I have seen 40% and when factoring in actual output a lot less. Hey their renewables includes nuclear which they are quickly expanding.
Oh by the way India is still building coal plants.
Still waiting
Food bank use in B.C. is at a record high, with 103,400 people receiving assistance as of March 2016, according to Food Banks Canada’s annual hunger count. That’s an increase of 3.4% since 2015, making 2016 the third year in a row that food bank use in B.C. has increased. Children accessed food banks at disproportionately high levels, according to the count, which reported that 32 percent of B.C. food bank users in 2016 were minors.
Shawn Pegg, the director of policy and research at Food Banks Canada and the author of the report, said the increase in B.C. is tied to the high cost of living and the disappearance of high paying jobs. “We see people working two or three part-time jobs and still being unable to make ends meet. We also see people transitioning back and forth between low paid work and social assistance,” he said.
ht tp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/food-bank-use-in-b-c-at-an-all-time-high-1.3851098
A special Merry Christmas goes out to Christy Clark and our Liberal MLAs.
You ignored Alberta, land of NDP skyrocketing food band usage.
h ttp://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-albertans-food-bank-usage-2016-1.3851473
Also with rising energy costs people will have to decide to eat or heat just like the third world province Ontario. Gotta love those fancy bird mincers.
Something else interesting, if for example a mine is built in Alberta remediation of the land is built in. But when wind or solar is built no remediation is required for when they fail or shutdown. The taxpayer will be on the hook for remediation of the land. Sweet deal along with big subsidies.
The NDP has been the provincial government in Alberta for an extremely short while after many decades of rule by right wing Conservative governments, yet you hold the NDP responsible for the right wing screwups! Pathetic, absolutely pathetic.
What the hell is a “bird mincer”? I’m in my 70s and I have never hears such an expression. Please talk English on this site, I like to understand what I am reading.
Bird mincer. That would be a windmill generator. They kill a lot of birds. Don’t actually mince them but kill them just the same.
Have you noticed that if a bird dies from landing in oil, the news is all over it, but if a bird is killed by a solar plant or a windmill, well nobody wants to talk about it!
So true, HG, when a few ducks died in a contaminated pond at the oil sands it was an international outrage, but millions are killed every year by windmills and that’s just fine.
Wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually — a small fraction compared with the estimated 6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4 billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats, according to the peer-reviewed study by two federal scientists and the environmental consulting firm West Inc.
“We estimate that on an annual basis, less than 0.1% … of songbird and other small passerine species populations in North America perish from collisions with turbines,” says lead author Wallace Erickson of Wyoming-based West.
My speciality is species extinction. When I was a child, my father used to tell me about all the animals he’d seen growing up in Kent — the grass snakes, the lime hawk moths — and what shocked me when we went looking for them was how few there were left. Species extinction is a serious issue: around the world we’re losing up to 40 a day. Yet environmentalists are urging us to adopt technologies that are hastening this process. Among the most destructive of these is wind power.
Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds. This breaks down as approximately 110–330 birds per turbine per year and 200–670 bats per year. And these figures may be conservative if you compare them to statistics published in December 2002 by the California Energy Commission: ‘In a summary of avian impacts at wind turbines by Benner et al (1993) bird deaths per turbine per year were as high as 309 in Germany and 895 in Sweden.’
ht tp://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/01/wind-farms-vs-wildlife/
Where have you people been for the last decade, ever hear of blade-less wind turbines?
ht tp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/photo/47343682.cms
Actually Attaloss the bird and bat kill by wind gen blades is grossly underestimated. Now in the states the eagle being held in such high regard its almost religious. Except when it comes to wind generators, a permit can be had for killing eagles and golden eagles, nearly 5000 thousand.
Ya heard of bladeless generators, ever see them, nope must be a reason.
Ataloss, you say that wind turbines kill between 214,000 and 368,000 birds annually!
So, how many are fried by solar arrays?
And how many by some oil in a containment pond?
Just wait until the minimum wage goes to $ 15 an hour and the number using food banks and children living in poverty now will seem miniscule to the numbers we’ll see then.
So it is choice between a person relying on a food bank while being part of the working poor or the person being poor, unemployed and relying on a food bank. Like as if one s****y circumstance is better than the other.
You bloody right wingers make me want to puke.
Ataloss, Being a braggart, a blowhard, and a condescending know it all does not make you right! It just makes you a good source of humour for the rest of us!
In my line of work I meet and work with a lot of Multi Millionaires, and not one of them ever brags about how well off they are, how smart they are with their investments, or how poorly their nighbours are doing!
You sir are a phoney, and most likely don’t have 2 nickels to rub together!
I don’t say anything to your face either . For good reason . And the reason is that most other Canadians can’t stand it when they see others that are successful . Don’t have two nickels to rub together? If you only knew ,your face would be even greener .
Ataloss. You talk as if you think people give a s..t how much money you have. In the big scheme of things is amounts to nothing. We have some pretty sick puppies in this world who spend most of their time trying to build a fortune.
The point they miss is very few people care, and those that do are like minded people.
Maybe they don’t brag because they are ashamed to admit they took advantage of the TFW’s program.
Christmas is a time for the children, where in BC, one in five of them live in poverty… let’s think about that for a minute.
ht tp://tinyurl.com/p2evhst
Children only live in poverty because their parents do. So why do their parents live in poverty? Is it because they acted irresponsibly? In most cases, yes. Think about that for a couple minutes.
So sadly true!
Here is hoping you come back in a second life born into some remote African village, where there is no industry, no employment, no technology, just third world living conditions… then tell the rest of us how it is all your, and the village’s, fault everyone is sleeping on dirt floors, in mud huts and are starving to death.
You are a real piece of work Dirtman!
Actually provide some evidence that “most” parents in dire straits are there because of irresponsibility, rather than just spouting the usual unsupported right wing trash talk that “fortunate sons” like you constantly engage in.
“…for the children, where in BC, one in five of them live in poverty.”
——————————–
BH, kindly explain how this (the comment I replied to) relates to Africa.
Hahaha, children of a single mother on welfare are in that situation because both she and the sperm donor acted irresponsibly. Just a fact of life in the “progressive” society we live in today.
Well it’s quite obvious Christy and her clowns need badly to see an optometrist because they sure as **** can’t see what is going on in this province. They have raised the cost of everything they can think of. ICBC,MSP,permits etc and the list goes on. Maybe they should have welfare increased so that we don’t have more people starving in the streets and depending on the food banks.
Oldman, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Wait til the NDP runs the province, then you’ll be on 3rd and George cry’in the blues, LMAO!
If they had a story here about how to put electric lights on a Christmas tree it would inevitably morph into the predictable fighting about global warming, with opinions (often based on biased or fake news) clashing and eventually turning to personal insults. 🤐
Heh. Quite likely.
How liberals really feel about black people.
ht tps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odB1wWPqSlE
Ataloss, I honestly don’t give a rats A$$ wether you have 2 nickels or a warehouse full. Doesn’t affect me in the least and it doesn’t make you a human being worth knowing or associating with.
So go hug a tree, install a solar panel, or go count your nickels. You and your opinion are not worth Jack $hit to most of the followers of this blog!
You’re a really sad person. Sounds like you need your mommy.
Nytehawwk. Maybe you don’t care . Maybe you don’t rub shoulders with me but I got to where I am because I had my shoulder to the wheel in every sense of the word . The rub is , that the more you make of yourself , the more you contribute to the whole . I pay taxes . How about you ? I enjoy paying my taxes . How about you ?
You enjoy paying your taxes?
Man, your dumber than I thought, haha!
Grizzly2–Seeing you have much knowledge of what it will be like in the future with the NDP I would like you to explain to me how a single person that is making a max of $610.00 a month on welfare is supposed to survive even for a short time when looking for work. One thing you will need a phone,transit,a place to stay,food and many other items so tell me how to do this.
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
and to you and yours Dirtman, a very Merry Christmas!
BeingHuman, you go on and on and on about the poor and the downtrodden! If you really want to help them, get off of your a$$ and go talk to Ataloss!
Apparently Ataloss is RICH, and not just rich, but absolutely loaded, in fact filthy rich! And on top of that, Ataloss enjoys paying taxes!
So, if you want help feeding the poor, obviously Ataloss is your man! Go hit him up for some of that cold hard CASH that he’ll be more than willing to share!
It will be a Christmas miracle I say, a Christmas miracle!
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