Eleven days without a post! This must be some sort of record, one that I’m not terribly proud of. I have my reasons, which I hope to share with you at some point (now is not the time).

There are a couple of things I’d like to mention now, however.

A few minutes ago I got a call from Canadian Tire Financial Services. I have a Canadian Tire Mastercard. They were calling to offer me, their “valued customer”, an identity theft assistance plan.

For only $6.95 per month (the first six months are “free”), if a criminal assumes my identity and steals my money, uses my credit and debit cards, drains my bank account, and generally wreaks havoc with my finances and records, I could call up Canadian Tire and they’d help me out.

My response to this phone call was an emphatic “no” and I explained why: this is practically extortion. It’s a protection racket.

Worse, for a financial services company, they are providing a service that gives them a vested interest in making sure identity theft remains a problem, because without identity theft no one would be motivated to sign up.

This is different than insurance, because they’re not offering to pay me back what someone steals from me, they’re just offering to help me straighten things out. This is different than burglar alarms, because the intent is not to stop a crime in progress, it’s simply to clean up the mess afterwards.

“I’m not going to live in fear of identity thieves,” I told the woman, and that was that (I don’t think my response was on her script).

The second thing I’d like to mention is Raise the Hammer’s Second Anniversary Party. If you’re in the area on Saturday, January 27, please stop by.

The environment is Canada’s most pressing issue, according to a just-released poll of Canadians. The same poll reports that 74 percent of Canadians believe Canada’s Conservative government is doing a poor job on the environment.

Prime Minister Harper knows he is vulnerable on the issue, which spurred him to shuffle his cabinet, booting Rona Ambrose as Minister of the Environment and replacing her with trusted lieutenant John Baird.

Newspaper headlines ran from “PM charts a greener course” (The Globe and Mail) to “Harper goes green” (The National Post).

But if Harper really wants to go green, he should start by legalizing it. Green, that is. Yup, I’m talking about marijuana.

Year of the CFL

Canada’s unique brand of football is increasingly popular. As temperatures continue to rise, football is only going to get more popular: after all, winter sports require winter, which bodes ill for hockey.

But there’s a different CFL on the block, and this is its year. Compact fluorescent lamps have finally hit their stride and they’re illuminating more homes than ever. Even Wal-Mart has stepped into the fray, with the goal of single-handedly doubling sales of the bulbs in one year.

CFLs are popular because they last far longer than regular bulbs, they use far less electricity (the 23-watt CFLs I bought today put out the same amount of light as a 100-watt incandescent bulb), and they no longer produce the harsh light normally associated with fluorescent lamps.

Using them is one of the easiest and most effective ways we can tackle global warming. Every time I stop by Canadian Tire I see somebody in the lights aisle, mulling over which CFL to buy.

Lightin’ Up the Basement

Canadian Tire, however, is not the only store in Hamilton where you can buy lights. The local hydroponics store also has a fine selection, but they’re not selling energy-efficient CFLs.

Instead, you’ll find high pressure sodium and metal halide lamps that range in power from 400 to 1000 watts apiece. Weed growers know that fluorescent lights might be useful for germinating seeds but to grow the fine bud, you need some proper lights.

It’s these lights that make hydroponic grow-ops such massive hydro users. Four 600-watt high pressure sodium lamps – about what’s necessary to grow pot in a large basement room – use as much electricity as it would take to light up 50 living rooms using 100-watt equivalent CFL bulbs.

It’s unknown how many marijuana grow operations there are in Canada, but there at least tens of thousands. The marijuana industry is thought to be worth $7 billion in British Columbia alone.

With all those lights burning to keep the pot growing, we’re talking about vast amounts of electricity and that means vast amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. All to grow a crop that grows even better outside in Canada’s warm summer months.

Mr. Harper, do the planet a favour and go green on the green.

[tags]global warming, marijuana legalization, cfl[/tags]

Keith Olbermann from MSNBC unloads on Bush’s latest “strategy” for Iraq in this video.

In case you haven’t heard, it looks like Bush is going to send more troops to Iraq as part of a “troop surge”. This is even though the Iraq Study Group recommended fewer troops in Iraq, a position supported by two thirds of Americans.

The number of American soldiers dead in Iraq has just surpassed 3000. Far, far more Iraqis have died. The human sacrifice continues unabated.

[tags]Iraq, Olbermann[/tags]

Happy New Year. Here’s hoping 07 is a good one for you and yours.

Some of the things I’m looking forward to in 2007:

• A new birthday to celebrate.
• Discovering a new metal band that really rocks, something on the order of System of a Down.
• A sudden, severe and permanently incapacitating illness that afflicts George Bush, Tony Blair, and the rest of the warmongers that plague this planet.
• Not worrying about getting put on a watch list for speaking my mind (see previous point).
• Being able to forgive those who least deserve forgiveness (see previous two points). That one might have to wait for a different New Year – like 2050.
• The population of all the world’s most prosperous countries suddenly waking up en masse and deciding to do something about poverty, injustice and climate change.
• Failing that, a Canada-wide awakening.
• Failing that, I might settle for my neighbourhood getting riled up. Even my family would be a good start.
• Snow. Please!

There’s more of course – watching the flowers I planted in the fall come up in spring and summer, cold beers on the front porch in hot August, ice cream cones on Locke Street – but I could go on forever.

Except there’s one more thing worth mentioning. In 2007 I’m looking forward to continuing to hear what you have to say: how you feel about what’s happening here in Canada and in the rest of the world, how you feel about your own lives and those of the people around you.

My New Year’s resolution is to keep listening, and to do something about it when I can.

Thanks for reading. It’s going to be a great year!