All posts by listerlogic@hotmail.com

3- SOLVING WORLD PROBLEMS

STRIKE OR EXTORTION?

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Although I support most aspects of unions, the right to strike is not one of them. Walking off the job and shutting a company down in a contest to see who can hold out the longest has absolutely nothing to do with getting a fair deal. In fact, in any other case, it would be called extortion. On top of that, often it is unionized and lower-paid people that end up suffering the most.

There is nothing wrong with workers uniting and walking off the job in protest if they feel it is warranted, but the right to form picket lines or other actions that would interfere with company operations should be illegal. Also, if employees have the right to walk off the job it makes sense the company should also have the right to replace those people permanently if they can find new employees to work under the same conditions and wages. This would make it fairer because if the reason for the employees walking off the job is sound, then the company will have trouble finding anyone to replace them with. If the employees walking off the job feel their skills are worth more than their current pay and conditions, they should have no problem finding a better job elsewhere. Issues over job safety should be settled by the labor board.

For most of us workers it’s hard to get perspective or care about a company’s point of view so imagine this: You hire a baby sitter to come to your house to look after your kids while you are at work. Both of you agree to a wage, hours and working conditions. After 6 months the babysitter demands more money, wants you to pay for a pension for them and wants more time off. There is no way you can afford there demands so you refuse. The next day they are at the end of your sidewalk with a picket sign blocking your car from leaving the driveway and holding up friends and visitors trying to enter and leave your house. You call the police but are told the babysitter is not breaking the law and there is nothing they can do. Not only that even though there are many other qualified people that would be happy to do your striking babysitter’s job for less, you are not allowed to hire them and must come to an agreement with the striking babysitter. The babysitter has other financial means of support and is able to stay on strike for 6 months or longer.

The worst part of a strike however, is not about being unfair for companies. The real victims are the less fortunate ones that have nothing to do with it. Farmers that can’t get their harvest to market because of a rail strike. Single parents scrambling for daycare once again because just after school support workers avert a strike the teachers threaten to walk off. Or people making minimum wage that can’t get to work because of transit workers making multiple times their salary walk off the job.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com

3- SOLVING WORLD PROBLEMS

WILL WORLD WAR- 3 BE DIGITAL?

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Imagine all of a sudden one day, across the entire country, everyone’s  bank account is emptied, business and government computers become inaccessible, power grids shut down, no internet or communications, our defense weapons and power plants become inoperative, cars stop dead in the street, and planes and trains become unsafe to use. How hard would it then be for another country to just walk in and take over or even remain anonymous demanding hundreds of billions in ransom to restore?   With world tension on the rise and nuclear weapons not an option without counter strikes that would destroy the planet, will the next major confrontation be digital?

The news is more frequently reporting business and government hacks where computers are encrypted and data held hostage until the company forks over a ransom.  The relativity small amounts of ransoms indicate they are most likely done by lone basement hackers. Now imagine a foreign country with thousands of highly trained computer experts spending  years secretly hacking into another country’s computers, preparing for a sudden digital Pearl Harbour type attack. 

At first it may sound far fetched but consider the following. Keystroke recording spyware can already secretly record every key pushed on your computer including user name and passwords to your accounts.  Spyware able to secretly track and turn on cell phone microphones and cameras has also exists not to mention Google Home and Alexia that if hacked can allow someone to listen to conversations undetected.  The list of possibilities goes as far as our imaginations.  Hacking of companies like OnStar would allow someone to activate the antitheft software on all their vehicles and shut them down.  It could take years to fix the damage.  Boeing’s Max 8 aircraft have been grounded for months with software problems and they weren’t even attacked with a virus.

Countries like Canada being digitally attacked by another country may at first sound ridicules but consider this, we buy items from countries that are made, assembled, shipped from the other side of the world and sold for a profit here at $1.25.  These third-world conditions combined with increasing populations and ever-dwindling resources and food are slowly turning these countries into hungry sharks.  Canada with its abundance of natural resources, fertile land and wealth combined with complacency when it comes to peace and trust make it the perfect unsuspecting seal. 

Now is the time to improve and tighten up our cybersecurity as well as backing up the countries critical systems with computers on offline sterile closed loops.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com

 

4- HOW WE THINK

CHASING HAPPINESS, OUTSIDE YOUR NORM

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What’s your “financial norm” in life?  No matter what your current “normal” lifestyle is, finding happiness always seems to be about having more.  Now imagine winning the lottery and getting all the things you ever wanted,  you would be ecstatic for months.  But how would you feel several years later when your new lifestyle became the norm?  Like everything in life, how can we appreciate the positive if we have no negatives to measure it by?  Is finding long term happiness through excessive wealth an illusion?

I can remember a time in my life when we could rarely afford to eat out.  Having the odd meal in a fast-food restaurant was something to look  forward to.   As things got better, eating fast-food more frequently became the new norm.  To achieve the same feeling we had to go to fancier, more expensive restaurants.   We assume that newfound happiness will last forever, but over time it becomes part of our normal lifestyle and we want more.  A cycle with no end.

As improvements to our norm make us happy, negative changes have a much more adverse effect.  Anyone that has had to give up air conditioning during a hot summer, or sell their car and start taking the bus would agree, negative changes to our norm have much more impact on happiness.  Even when these negative changes eventually through time become our new norm we never quite get used to it like we would if we had never had them.

Ever wonder why happiness evades some wealthy people? After getting everything they could ever want, have they come to realize the illusion.  Maybe the rest of us are the lucky ones, still with something to strive for, believing eternal happiness is just a pay increase or lottery win away.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com

2-PERSONAL EXPERIENCES

MONSTERS OF DEPRESSION

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The first time was the worst.  They came in the middle of the night without warning or reason, waking me from a deep sleep. Monsters made of 100% raw negative emotion appeared and had taken over my head. There were 4 of them: boredom, poison, anxiety and doom, each connected and feeding off the others.

They were foreign, relentless,  emotions without a cognitive trigger that couldn’t be explained or rationalized away.  Personal foundations of religion or using logic were useless in fighting them.  There was no escaping through sleep, drugs or alcohol, even for a second. So strong, they took away apatite and caused trembling, diarrhea, and vomiting.  At their strongest surviving more then a couple of days would not be possible.  So much worse than I ever imagined hell could be like.  It felt like they were not from this world and I feared they could even follow in death. 

Boredom was the biggest and worst of them all, 1,000 times stronger than any boredom I had experienced before.  Poison was next, taking away any joy from doing things I normally like and replacing it with even more bad feelings, adding to the already unbearable boredom.  Anxiety from not being able to get away from them kept me from sleeping or resting and doom convinced me things were going to get worse.  Time slowed and all my thoughts were consumed with trying to fight them.

The first attack over a decade ago slowly eased a few days afterword for again, no apparent reason leaving me forever changed.  I’ve felt them every day since, some days more than others but never near as bad as the first time.  Always lurking in the shadows, leaving me never knowing if and when another full out attack may happen.

Dave Lister 

listerlogic.com

3- SOLVING WORLD PROBLEMS

THE SOLUTION TO SAVING THE ENVIRONMENT

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The biggest threat to the environment is rarely talked about and easy to fix but unless it’s addressed soon, nothing else we do will keep us from destroying the planet.

The damage we do to the Earth is simple math. The size of the average persons carbon foot print, times the number of people on the planet. Since 1970 the worlds population has doubled. At the present rate kindergarten students today will see it double again in their lifetime, doubling the damage we’re currently doing to the planet. If left unchecked a generation later will see the Earths population double again making are carbon foot print 4 times what it is today, and so on. Just look around and you can see how fast cities and towns are expanding.

As we sit on the tipping point of catastrophic disaster even if the population stopped increasing today we would be lucky not to loose this game of Jenga we are playing with the worlds ecosystem. Left unchecked we will soon realize all the science, carbon taxes and government policies in the word won’t put a dent in fixing the damage done by this rapid population growth.

Even skeptics of climate change can’t ignore the logistics of providing enough food and energy for a world population multiple times larger then todays not to mention dealing with the waste. The more the worlds populations grow the greater the threat of conflict between nations over resources.

Having children is one of the most fulfilling and important parts of being human and no one has to give that up to save the planet. If every couple had an average of 2 children the worlds population would stop growing and become neutral, that combined with current programs and scientific advances might give us a chance at survival.

There is no time to waste. “World population” needs to be at the top of the list for combating climate change. The people of the world need to understand that controlling population growth is the only thing that will save us. Only then will governments be able to to make it work by phasing in policies like eliminating child tax breaks for large families. Changing current values will not be easy and it will take brave politicians with our support to implement the policy’s necessary.

A slowing growth in population will also effect many other issues. Although it would solve some problems like easing the housing crisis and transit problems it will also most likely have a negative effect on the stock market and countries with deficit based pyramid type economy’s.

We can no longer foolishly believe electric cars, carbon taxes, recycling, bicycling, and renewable energy will save the planet. Until population growth is brought under control, nothing else we do matters. Effects of biblical proportion from are actions are no longer generations in the future but will be felt within your or your children’s lifetime. After reading this, It is now up to you to do your part to help save the planet by getting the word out about population growth, through friends, school, work, social media, political lobbing or simply passing on this post. People are already beginning to focus on the science behind climate change but it is much more important to focus on the math.

Dave Lister

listerlogic.com