What Has Fair Trade Coffee Spawned?

Posted on 20 March 2010 by Larry Russwurm

You’ve probably heard of Fair Trade Coffee over the last few years. I think it has become popular due to documentaries spreading the idea that the coffee grower makes next to nothing in the production of this crop. If you haven’t heard of fair trade the idea is simple. We in the rich west will pay a little more for coffee in order to give a fairer wage to the growers.

I’m certain that the fair trade movement has made an impression on the big coffee companies. Recent advertising has associated Nabob with The Rainforest Alliance. Being the product of a for profit company, the deal isn’t as good for the growers as Fair Trade. Nabob has only committed itself to buying 30% Rainforest Alliance coffee.

So on one hand we have fair trade coffee by goody goods and on the other hand we have a capitalist company concerned with profit. Now don’t get me wrong, at one point I might have sided with Nabob, especially if their product ended up being cheaper. Except…

Concerned capitalists keep wanting to enforce the primacy of the shareholder in corporations and thus almost everything comes down to the bottom line. As you probably know, most business people are “concerned capitalists” and if corporations have the rights of a person, it is as a very greedy person that they act as.

So I know in advance due to a preponderance of evidence that if the fair trade coffee organizations fail and Nabob survives, Nabob will eventually see the Rainforest Alliance as a money losing venture. They will either take away funding and keep prices the same or take away the funding and decrease their price to increase market share. Either thing might be done by a greedy person. Notice that there is no option for keeping funding.

Whereas if Nabob failed and fair trade coffee continued, I bet that the fair trade organizations would remain the same.

But wait, there’s another twist thrown out by a different coffee competitor – the mighty Maxwell House brand. I think they see fair trade coffee as straight up charity and thus they are now competing by simply giving straight to charities. In this area of the world.

For those of you who don’t know, coffee is grown in tropical countries – in the developing world. By giving to developed world charities, Maxwell house is making it about a choice of us or them. The greed of customers for their charities is being counted on to “vote” by buying Maxwell House coffee. Notice that the corporation, which is governed by greed for its shareholders, assumes greed is the guiding force in its customer base.

Despite my living in the developed world, I know that the developed world is so much poorer they need money more than the developed nations. Plus, I also know that if money reaches its intended destination in the developing world, the same amount stretches out way further than in the developed world.

So there you have it, three different coffee selling cultures and a brief rundown on the good it does for buying each. Obviously I am pro free trade coffee the most. But it is nice to see that there are 3 options in Canada that just don’t take, they give back as well. I blame free trade coffee. It’s those damn aforementioned goody goods.

Posted in Business, Politics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , , , , | 10 Comments

Patents vs. Copyrights

Posted on 13 March 2010 by Larry Russwurm

A copyright lasts for the artist’s lifetime plus 75 years. A patent lasts 20 years. Is this even close to being fair?

I can kind of see it. A patent can directly be responsible for saving someone’s life. If you don’t have the money to pay the monopoly (read patent holder), which can charge anything it sees fit, you could die. So a shortened patent longevity might be seen as being compassionate.

No one is going to die if they aren’t given a proper recording of ‘Happy Birthday’ played for them at their birthday. So maybe we can extend the monopoly of the artist longer.

It stinks to high heaven. This doesn’t even approximate a fair system. Let’s name the people on the patent side as scientists and on the copyright side as fine artists. In our capitalist society the scientists are given short shrift. Largely we tell them they are so useful that the monetary gain given fine artists can never be theirs.

What should we do? Lengthen the patent length? People will die. Progress will be slowed. How about decreasing the length of a copyright to 20 years?

And the recording companies make such a big deal out of file sharing. Maybe scientists ought to be able to download anything pre 1990, guilt free. It would only be fair.

Post script:

I know I have simplified in this article. I just wanted to say things in a stark manner so my points would be obvious. For instance, I think performances are copyrighted for “only” 50 years in this country (Canada). And instead of scientists, inventors usually do the patenting. It’s just that inventors are almost invariably schooled in sciences. The basic science stuff that we all learn in school isn’t even covered by patents or copyrights. Coming up with a new accepted theory gives no protection, so maybe the straight scientists should be allowed to copy and download anything from any year. And I avoided talking about patent extensions because Canada does not allow it.

Posted in Art, Music, Politics, Science, Wee Bit O' Humour, Writing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Entitled Alanis

Posted on 6 March 2010 by Larry Russwurm

If you hadn’t heard, Alanis Morissette wrote the song Ironic in 1995 and despite its mega success, had the definition of ironic wrong. At least I think she did. My dictionary defines irony ( it doesn’t have a separate place for ironic) as an event or result that is the opposite of what is expected.

So, when Morissette says that ironic is “like rain on your wedding day” she is wrong because rain on your wedding day can be expected.

So here I am, a white knight here to rescue poor Alanis’s song. But let me get one thing straight – I am fundamentally lazy so I hope to make the rescue with one word. A three syllable word that will replace ironic in Morissette’s song and hopefully meet all the conditions set forth by the song.

“Curious” is the first word I will attempt to replace ironic with. I’m asking you, dear reader, to get the song and play it. Trust me, if you are not personally familiar with the song, it’s in your parent’s or older sibling’s collection or someone you know. The album “Jagged Little Pill” that spawned it, is, I believe, the best selling album by a female artist.

Now that you can replace the lyric “ironic” with “curious”, I hope to get you to vote on it. That’s right I have other substitutes and would like to hear from you if you have even better substitutes.

Judging from what Alanis has offered with her lyrics, I suspect “frustrating” or “annoying” might be an adequate lyric instead of “ironic”.

“Demented” is also a possibility, I just worry that this offers a slant she never wished for.

Finally, I finish up with “Unexpected”. I don’t expect this will fly. Firstly it is a four syllable word, but I notice that I can voice it and keep the integrity of the song. Although I suspect this is the definition that Alanis may have been writing to, “rain on your wedding day” still doesn’t work because rain is still foreseeable.

I offer up all these substitutes knowing that ironic could still work. That is if Alanis is so extremely entitled she is virtually the most entitled human being on the planet.

Look, if she is extremely entitled, the weather could revolve around her, and thus, finally, rain on her wedding day could be unexpected.

Let’s see if other parts of the song work, assuming this extremely entitled Alanis and how that effects the definition of ironic. “An old man turns 98, he won the lottery and dies the next day.”

Miss entitled Alanis has just heard of this 98 year old. But that is sufficient for the 98 year old to last 2 or more days – after all poor Alanis has had time to form a small attachment.. So thus the death becomes the opposite of what one should expect.

“A traffic jam when you’re already late.” Of course entitled Alanis only has one thing go wrong at a time so this is the opposite of what one would expect and ironic. Entitled Alanis seems to win every time.

Still I’ve listened to the song again and am going to put my vote in for “demented”. Deep down I must think that even Alanis Morissette isn’t that entitled.

Posted in Humour, Music | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Updates

Posted on 1 March 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Cheaters:

Even more suspiciously, Canada finished the Vancouver Olympics with 14 gold medals. This many golds is a record for any winter Olympics by any country. Bear in mind Canada’s Own the Podium program has only been going for 5 years and official word had been that 5 years was too short to win in the gold medal count, let alone set a record.

Open Call for Cartoonists;

Not surprisingly, I received no submissions of artwork. I thought I was dealing with too small a pool of people and was right about that. I will eventually get around to cartooning the two IOC cartoons. They’ll be up well before London 2012 for those who might want to link. Now that it’s past the date for the Vancouver Olympics, the VANOC cartoon will never be drawn. Too bad because after Canada’s good showing (see above), I’ve heard VANOC being praised more than I’d like.

But mostly I feel I got no submissions because I referred to potential submitters as victims. As one victim to potentially another, I’ll try to sharpen my language next time.

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Cheaters

Posted on 27 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

At one time Canada had a national embarrassment. You see we held the summer Olympics in Montreal in 1976 and we failed to get a gold medal. It was such a blatantly honest performance that the IOC let us host another Olympics only 12 years later.

So, in 1988 we held the winter Olympics in Calgary. Embarrassingly enough we again failed to win a gold medal at a games we were hosting. Not willing to repeat the 12 year thing for our honesty, the IOC let us host another Olympics a longer 22 years later.

Now before we get to Vancouver 2010, we should have a little reminder. Since 1976, the USA, a country with 9 times Canada’s population, has only hosted the Olympics 4 times. Our little nation with 33 million has hosted 3 times. I can only believe we’ve been so privileged because of our blatant honesty. True Ben Johnson was caught cheating in the Seoul 1988 summer Olympics but we dealt with it. And did I say we were obviously not cheating on the whole or we would have won a gold in Calgary or Montreal.

In the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada has caught the cheating bug in a big way. We could have made it plausible by winning one or two gold medals. But no, we went out of our way and have now won 10 and may even win more gold medals than any other country. Any more and we break the record for most golds by a host country in the winter Olympics. We could have made it look likely. But now the world is going to see us as one great big cheater.

Sure we pretend it was the “Own the Podium” program that got us all those gold medals. But doesn’t that very name sound almost like a threat. As in ‘we own the podium so the rest of you nations had better cooperate’.

Now that we have come of age as cheaters what of our upcoming Olympic bids? Toronto has tried a couple of times to attract the summer Olympics. But now the IOC sees right through Canadians and our cheating ways. It looks like the earliest Toronto will see itself hosting the summer Olympics will be in 2100. Thanks a lot Vancouver.

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Another Fine Back Up

Posted on 20 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Lines are needed during any spacewalk. In the frictionless environment up there, the only thing to push off against is the spaceship. There is nothing to push back against to get back to the spaceship. Thus, the line is the only thing that will get you where you want to go. What if it breaks?

Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Indeed, in frictionless space this is how the spaceship moves. It energetically throws mass out it’s rear.

If the spacewalker has say a wrench, she has a back up for the line. She can throw the wrench away from the ship and back towards safety. But what if she has nothing to throw?

If only the astronaut could somehow inhale inside the suit and exhale outside it. The exhale would nicely propel her. Being able to breathe and spit at the same time would be nice, too.

How about making the suit such that the urethra was exposed to the vacuum? Imagine peeing your way back home to the spaceship. Unfortunately, you wouldn’t be able to see where you’re going easily.

Which leads directly to another available orifice on the astronaut’s body. You could design a suit such that you could fart your way back to the ship. And if you really have a lot of momentum in the wrong direction, there’s nothing like explosive diarrhea to bring you safely back to base.

Laugh at all this as much as you want. But mark my words, if we develop spacesuits that allow such actions, one day an astronaut’s life will be saved because of it.

Posted in Humour, Science | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Slackers

Posted on 13 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

The spectacle that’s called the Winter Olympics is soon to start in Vancouver and that got me to thinking. Why is it that athletes are still setting world records? And it seems that they are doing it with regularity. I’d like to see the statistics; are world records still coming at the same rate as they did many years ago?

If they are, I can only come up with two plausible answers. The first one sounds preposterous. The species is becoming better, stronger and faster. Maybe even one day man might be the fastest land animal. Sounds ridiculous at least to my first impression. What could possibly cause this? Maybe it’s something like the height thing. You know, the statistics prove that on average children will grow to be taller than their parents. Maybe that’s because of better nutrition. Also, at least some sports heroes are breeding with each other. This can be a standard breeding procedure to get a better species. Cows for instance have been bred to produce more and more milk. It works. There is quantitative evidence. It’s just that most times, world record holding athletes are not from successful athlete / successful athlete parents.

The other possibility is that successful athletes are slackers. Don’t get me wrong, I know how hard it is to work out and train constantly. In that regard I have high esteem for successful athletes. But do they do enough? It seems to me that they might be slowing down a bit in this regard after they are deemed successful. A great proportion of their life is taken up with a single minded purpose to be the best in the world. Even this might not be enough for some. To prove they are the best they may try for a world record. But what happens once they achieve this? They have nothing left to beat. Do they then say ‘enough with the drive I’m good enough and now want what the world can offer’? If another athlete can beat their record 5 years later why couldn’t they have trained that much harder for a record that can’t be beaten?

I personally think these successful athletes do slack off after becoming “the best to date”. Maybe that single minded pursuit of their dream has left their life lacking in other ways. Maybe best to date is enough for them. But I propose that those same athletes would have had more left and could compete with the athletes of a later time. Maybe it’s just the lack of goals left after you get a world record. Could this say something about the human spirit?

Maybe the rest of us are slackers too. It might be less obvious than in sports but could be true. The most obvious to me is in the field of rock music. I think some of the fans are like me and could care less about the age of the performer and only about the music. But it has become obvious to me that as an artist grows older, eventually their music seems not as good. It can take a long time, sometimes twenty years or more but to me it has happened to every artist I know about. And in rock music, the artists cannot use age as an excuse, they don’t have to deal with being unable to perform because of body changes like the athletes do. Either there are negative brain changes as we age or these rock musicians are slackers, too.

Maybe there is something to the expression you have to stay hungry. Success seems to eventually lead to slacking. Maybe we as a species need to try to rise above the herd more often and for longer.

Posted in Humour, Sports | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Open Call for Cartoonists

Posted on 7 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

I haven’t been keeping track of any stats on this site, like how many views I get per article and such. I’m just crossing my fingers that there is a large enough critical mass of you that at least one of you is a fine upstanding cartoonist or willing to dip your foot in the cold, cold water of cartooning.

I myself have cartooned before, a political cartoon in my university days called Jacques O’ Christmas Tree. If you are thinking by name alone that the title character might be a jack o’ lantern head on a Christmas tree body then you would be right. I am retooling right now and hope to start doing a Jacques O’ Christmas Tree comic strip.

The transition from political to straight humour isn’t a perfectly clean path. A couple strips I developed for Jacques (the new strip) were straight political humour involving the International Olympic Committee. I even came up with one for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

It would be ideal to publish these now, with all the buzz of the upcoming Olympics. But I still haven’t compiled my scanner and still don’t know how to use it. So I am trying to reach out to any of you who are cartooning inclined and have a scanner. I will provide the 3 jokes. Just please draw the cartoon and scan it into jpeg format. Then email it to me with the jpeg being the body of the letter and your name can either be on the drawing or list it in the title of the email and I will put it up at this site with accreditation.

I’m not offering any compensation for the work I’m requesting. So let it be known, if I end up with no nibbles from this it just proves that being a cheap bastard doesn’t pay. But also let it be known that I haven’t received one scrap of compensation for this site as of yet. So come on, be a victim with me. The email to send your work to is larry@larryrusswurm.com .

IOC Cartoon #1:

Panel 1 :

The back of someone’s head looking at the outside of a store. Up above it says “Cubehead’s Furniture Warehouse”. There are two signs in the window. The first one says “Coffee tables $200”. The other one says “Wrecked Coffee Tables $250”.

Panel 2 :

Same person talking to an obviously cubeheaded individual. “I don’t get it Cubehead! How come the wrecked coffee tables are more?”

Panel 3 :

Close up of Cubehead speaking. “Well someone didn’t use coasters and left rings…”

Panel 4 :

Cube head still speaking. “…5 rings in a pattern the IOC would get upset about!”

IOC Cartoon #2

Panel 1 :

Man talking to a woman. “Did you hear about the latest crop circles?”
Woman, “No, why?”

Panel 2 :

Man, “They’re rings in the shape of the Olympic symbol!”
Woman, “So?”

Panel 3 :

Man,”The IOC must be in a useless manic state right now…”

Panel 4 :

Man continuing “…who are they going to sue? The farmer? The aliens?”
Woman, “Maybe the farmer will sue the IOC!”

VANOC Cartoon

Panel 1 :

Commentary bar at the top of the panel reads, “Meanwhile VANOC was annexing culture…”
Normal looking man talking, “I’ve got something that might help us stay in the black!”
Man in conical hat, “What’s that?”

Panel 2 :

Normal Man, “We’ll trademark “A Christmas Carol” all except the first word and last!”

Panel 3 :

Normal Man, “Then we can sue all the publishers of that book for violating our trademark!”

Panel 4 :

Man in conical hat, “Hmmm! After all Dickens did set it in winter. It’s like he was asking for it!”

UPDATE: Both IOC cartoons were published in a July post using the online service Bitstrips. They can be seen here. The VANOC cartoon’s effectiveness died with the Vancouver Winter Olympics. The IOC cartoons can live for other Olympics. London 2012 for instance.

Posted in Art, Humour | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments

Power Equals Momentum Equals Force

Posted on 2 February 2010 by Larry Russwurm

Right now on the Canadian Television Network (CTV) they are airing an ad for the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics. I want to throttle the copywriter because they equate power with momentum and force, terms which don’t even come close to equating if you use the physics definitions.

I know what you’re thinking. “Larry,” this is your thought, “you are being too anal. Perhaps the copywriter is just using the looser English definitions of these three words.”

Now as much as I hate it, this is usually a bye. Ordinarily I’d have to just take back the threat to the copywriter and bite my tongue.

But, this time the copywriter takes pains to introduce the physics definition of momentum. He defines it as mass times velocity.

Why can’t the copywriter also look up the physics definition of force and power? If he did he would realize that these three terms are indeed very different.

This copywriter has confused a new crop of Canadian physics students. His lack of insight makes it harder for the rest of us to make clear what is meant by physical terms.

I guess I’m mildly pleased that he didn’t use the terms energy, work and inertia to totally take us back to the dark ages. Yes, I shall stick with that old saw, that things could even be worse than they are now. This way I won’t be thrown out of CTV’s copywriting office by a team of large security guards.

Post script. I thought I may have been overstating the idiocy of the copywriter from CTV. So I recorded the ad and transcribed the offending part. The transcription follows:

“Momentum. Momentum is the power that exists in a moving object. It is mass times velocity. It is the fundamental force of motion.”

Power is defined as energy/time. Since they explicitly say “the power that exists in a moving object” they presumably mean kinetic energy / time. But who can tell with such confusion about fundamental definitions?

And how about force being “the fundamental force of motion”? Force is so tied into the concept of motion that its definition is Newton’s Second Law of Motion.

Yup. Guaranteed to confuse the new crop of high school physics students.

Post script 2. I finished this Feb. 1, but will wait till tonight past midnight to publish. That way this B.S. science commercial will be called out on that ultimate B.S. science day : Groundhog Day.

Posted in Science, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

The Brain Drain Revisited

Posted on 30 January 2010 by Larry Russwurm

In the previous post I tackled the brain drain problem: highly skilled and thus “brainy” Canadians moving to the United States in search of better pay or careers.

Let’s examine that highly skilled equating to brainy assumption for a minute. Does no one in the press recognize that highly skilled does not necessarily mean brainy? Remember the stereotypical ‘absent minded professor’. It’s not hard to get the idea of someone being well trained in one category of intelligence while being sadly lacking in other areas. Indeed, I think this is what the ‘absent minded professor’ stereotype is meant to illustrate.

So, the Canadian “brains” might be deciding to move due to an impaired judgment process in their non-specialty areas like lifestyle.

Let’s look at one important stat. The murder rate. You need a fairly large city to compare murder rates with, because smaller centers can vary widely, year to year.

So I’ll take the biggest city in Canada, Toronto, and note that that city had a steady murder rate over the two years of 2000 and 2001 of 61 murders in both years. Now which American city to compare with? Here comes the art in this comparison. Detroit has roughly the same population and is also a Great Lake city. Indeed these two cities are connected by a 5 hour drive. The murder rate for 2000 was 396 in Detroit and 398 for 2001. That means you have about a 6 times greater chance of being murdered in Detroit than Toronto.

Maybe you feel this is an unfair comparison. I guess it is. On average the American murder rate is only 3 times that of Canada’s. I just can’t help comparing Detroit and Toronto because I live on the road between these two cities.

Want to live the longest life possible? That, too, might be a consideration of these so called “brains”. In a recent year, Canada’s average life expectancy was 78.1 years. The U.S.? 76.8 years was the average.

And now, if our “brains” pay attention, the economy in the current recession has been better up here than down south. Sure your job may be offering more. But if you are planning the move with family, the others might not fare as well as you.

So here you are “brains”. three good reasons not to move south of the border. Don’t worry if none of these reasons are your specialty – I checked for you. But then again some of you are probably so “idiot-savant” my coaxing and attempting to reason with you is probably lost.

Hey, maybe those of us left here are meant to be in an intellectually better rounded populace.

Posted in Politics, Wee Bit O' Humour | Tagged , , | 1 Comment