Blog

Letter to my MP

Journalists are saying these days the Harper government is as transparent as a brick, that our prime minister is preventing all his MPs of speaking publicly on any subject. I’ve recently put this theory to test by sending an e-mail to my own conservative MP in Lévis–Bellechasse, Mr. Steven Blaney, to ask him about his position on the environment front. It has been a week since then and I’m still waiting for an answer. The theory seems to confirm itself. It’s a little lame.

Here is a translation in English of my letter.

Subject: Environment cuts
Date: April 13, 2006
To: Blaney.S@parl.gc.ca

Mr. Steven Blaney, Member of Parlement for Lévis-Bellechasse,

Firstly, congratulation for your election last January. I hope this will give you the occasion in Parlement as a MP of the party forming the government to change things for the best in canadian politics. I also want to thank you for your outstanding particitation in my “Question d’élection” chronicle during the last campaign; I found this really impressing.

I’m writing to you about the cuts in the environmental programs, mainly in greenhouse gas reduction programs, as unveiled yesterday by The Gazette.

I’m recalling you said yourself in answer to my question about the environment (in French) last december that Canadians are eager to see the government invest more in this in environmental programs. You said:

In fact, according to a recent study from the Private Council, environment is at the top of Canadian’s preoccupations and they are interested in seeing the government invest in this sector massively.

Apparently I’m part of this majority of Canadians, and I’d like to signal my disagreement with the idea of massive cuts in this sector.

As you mentioned in response at the same question, greenhouse gas emissions will probably continue to grow in the next decades and this will obviously have some effect on life. Even if Canada cannot reach Kyoto protocol’s objectives in time, reducing atmospheric pollution can only improve our quality of life and health. I’m not exactly sure how removing funds for these programs can do any good.

I’d like to know what you think of all that. I’d also like to know how you can intervene in favor of environmental policies and if you count doing it.

Thank you and good luck with all your enterprises.

Michel Fortin

Got-a-book!

Wednesday I found an Amazon package in my mailbox. Someone found my donation page, went further to my Amazon wishlist and purchased Dive Into Python for me. I still have to read it, but I wanted to say thank you to Graham Hibbert from Lancaster, GB, proud PHP Markdown user.

I also want to thank everyone who sent me a monetary donation in appreciation of my applications and other software in my projects section. Last month has been particularly high in donations: I received four, totaling 85 canadian dollars (minus $4.68 for PayPal processing). I guess this has contributed motivating me for the universal update of this week.

That’s not enough to make a living of, but for that I have other ideas…

Universalized

I have in my “projects” section three Mac OS X applications. Now that there is a version of Mac OS X for the Intel processor of the new Macs, I’ve recompiled them to universal binaries that can work natively on these new computers. Black Light and Sim Daltonism are now universal while Control Gamma has been since last December.

I do not have an Intel-powered Mac to test them however so I’ll have to rely on bug reports to fix any glitch. And I’d be pleased too if someone could tell me everything works fine. :-)

Black Light

This release of Black Light, beside being universal, brings two small improvements:

• You can color-filter the display from the Black Light application. This means you can make your screen red-only for instance making it possible to work on the computer in a photo lab or an astronomy observatory.

• Screen inversion will now “respect” the color correction from the display profile. Previously, if your screen was, say, blueish and you corrected it in the Colorsync profile or by using other tools, inversion would bring back that blueish tint. Not any more.

The PowerPC-only screen saver from the previous version will probably not work on Intel Macs. This update should fix that.

Sim Daltonism

The sole purpose of this update is to bring speed to the Intel Macs. As filtering an image in real-time is a processor intensive task, it should help to have a native version instead of counting on Rosetta emulation.

Beside that I’ve arranged the application so that if you click on the dock icon when there is no longer a filter window on screen it’ll create a new one automatically. Previously you would need to go to the File menu and select New Filter Panel.

Gamma Control

Gamma Control was first “universalized” in December when new Intel-powered Macs were rumored for January’s MacWorld. I’ve made a new release only to fix a bug I’ve been made aware in February preventing the application from working on Mac OS X 10.3.9.

Invasion of Canada

Did you knew that the USA had secret plans to conquer Japan, United Kingdom, Canada, Mexico in the 30’s? Apparently, that’s all in the national archives. Floyd Rudmin examine the compulsive behaviour of thinking of the worse and preventing hypothetical situations by going into unprovoked wars. I’m quoting Secret War Plans and the Malady of American Militarism:

But Americans feel more threatened than most other people on the planet. The U.S. military budget now exceeds that of all other nations combined. The U.S.A. is now the only nation with two defense departments; one to defend the homeland and one to… to do what? To project “defense” of America outside of our borders into other nations? That is normally called “aggression”.

Projection may be the key to marketing military projects in America. These may begin as “realpolitik” projects: schemes to take economic resources, for example, to increase trade or to control oil. Then we imagine that others are planning to do to us what we know we are planning to do to them, like the “Golden Rule” in reverse. It is classic psychopathic projection. And we feel fear. […] Thus we enter an accelerating cycle of belligerence and fear; each feeding the other and turning “aggression” into “defense”. We imagined that Nicaragua’s Sandinistas would invade Texas. We imagined that a socialist government in Grenada would destabilize the Western Hemisphere. We imagined that Iraq would put nuclear bombs into New York subways. These are all comic claims, but many in America did not laugh. Instead, we attacked these nations.

So, are the two US defence departements psychotic? I’d tend to say yes, but maybe they are just trying to justify their insane funding.