Well, there goes another sacred cow! Leisureguy has a post about how orange juice isn’t what most of us thought it was, but rather a stale nasty brew that sits in vats for up to a year and has to have its taste “enhanced” with flavor concentrates before it can be sold.
It seems that every day a little more pleasure is discretely sucked away from our existence. This month the City of Montreal has banned the installation of new wood-burning fireplaces and wood stoves in its territory because of their contribution to Winter air pollution. And you won’t be allowed to replace your old stove when it breaks down. Other municipalities are quickly following suit. If you want a cozy fire in your living room in the Winter, well, flick that electric fireplace switch and bask in its warm glow.
And if the shit hits the fan, well don’t reach for toilet paper…at least not the soft kind. The Gazette reported today that there is a movement afoot to ban soft toilet paper (I kid you not) because its manufacture is environmentally destructive. Instead we should use toilet paper made from recycled paper because its “friendlier”. Most readers know that I have green tendencies, so toilet paper from recycled fibers (note I didn’t fall for “recycled toilet paper” which I know would have given you all a snicker!), would be an interesting option. So I bought a 32 pack at Costco a few months ago. The problem? Its so thin you use up three times as much as the soft commercial kind. And worse (I don’t know how to not be indelicate here), once the paper is moist from its first contact with the waste-matter, your fingers have a tendency to pierce the paper and come in contact with places “where the sun don’t shine”!
And as for “sucking the marrow”….. forget it…..its got way too much cholesterol, not to mention Mad Cow prions.
“This month the City of Montreal has banned the installation of new wood-burning fireplaces and wood stoves in its territory because of their contribution to Winter air pollution.”
Are you fucking serious ? Sorry about the swearing but…ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS ??? This is what Canada is coming to ? For Christ’s sake, what the hell is wrong with you people ? Why do you let these assholes do this to you ? Methinks it’s time for a fucking revolution. Again, sorry about swearing, Steve, but this kind of shit makes me want to plant high explosives in government buildings. Ya, ya, I know it’s probably illegal even to have these thoughts but, goddam, what is going on ? Are Canadians so goddam sheeplike ? You know, there are many things to dislike in Greece but one of the very good things is how people are not afraid to ignore stupid government regulations. Man, reading this news this morning really destroyed my day !
By: Your Cousin George on March 4, 2009
at 3:35 am
While I share some of your outrage at such Draconian measures that don’t seek some compromise, e.g EPA certified low-emission stoves, or the use of compressed sawdust logs that burn 80% clean, I also think that Greece could use a little less ignoring of “stupid” rules and a little more self-discipline. I have routinely sat in restaurant non-smoking sections with guys puffing all around me, and when I asked them to stop they looked at me sarcastically and made some stupid comment such as : “Why….do you want to live forever?” Greece now has the highest smoking rate in the world and the highest lung cancer rate in Europe. Check this out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1878359.stm
Also 6th in the world for obesity (Canada is 12th), and #1 for obesity in Europe.
There has to be some halfway point between Canadian political correctness and Greek arrogance!
By: Steve on March 4, 2009
at 10:32 am
Steve as you said before if the city was really serious about the dangers of wood burning stoves they would also have to cancel the yearly fireworks competition.Remember last summer at the end of one of the displays, The cordite cloud was so thick you could,t see five feet ahead of you.
By: Italo on March 4, 2009
at 2:11 pm
Who gives a shit if Greece has the highest obesity or lung cancer rate in Europe. That’s a person’s business, not the goddam government’s. I don’t smoke either, and also find it incredibly annoying (it’s much better than it was 10 years ago, by the way) when others smoke around me in restaurants but I prefer that to some fucking pencil-necked asshole bureaucrat deciding what’s good for me.
I absolutely reject the idea that the government of Montreal has any right to regulate wood-burning fireplaces. It’s asinine to argue that they contribute to pollution; There’s nothing more natural than burning wood, for crying out loud. And the heating alternatives are…what ? Building dams to produce electricity that will require flooding massive areas ? Nuclear power plants ? Oil and gas ?
Man, this topic is really making me angry. First it was mandatory bike helmets, then came baby car seats, anti-smoking laws, etc., etc.,.. Now we’ve come to this. Next, Big Brother will insist on installing CCTV inside your home to make sure you don’t waste food or flush the toilet only when it’s absolutely fulll. How much are you willing to take ?
By: Your Cousin George on March 5, 2009
at 3:01 am
Have a cigarette and calm down!
Living in a society is a constant balancing act between personal liberty and responsibility to others. In my mind, your personal freedom ends at the juncture between your fist and my chin, i.e. when what you’re doing hurts me.
When we first moved to this home 20 years ago, we had an old coot of a neighbor who two or three times a year insisted on burning his garbage in large drums in his back yard. That’s the way his daddy did it I guess and he wanted to preserve the “tradition”…who the Hell knows! He would throw everything into these drums…plastic containers, paint cans, old kitchen cabinets…you name it. This toxic brew would waft over to my yard where the kids were playing, and embers from the fire would make their way toward my roof when the wind shifted. “Hey, don’t screw with my personal liberty” you might say, “I’m doing this in my own back yard!” But obviously, as a sane person, you must admit that this was rather outrageous, and a very good reason for by-laws preventing the burning of garbage in urban areas.
Unfortunately, your head injuries from not wearing helmets, lung cancer from smoking, and obesity with its related diseases, IS my business because I have to pay for your costs through my government and private health insurance. The argument that its nobody’s business is only true if you live out in the woods somewhere and are willing to quietly go off and die in the bush like an old elephant when his time is up. Otherwise, if you go to a hospital that we both pay for, you make it my business. And the direct toxicity of second-hand smoke is so beyond debate that even the tobacco companies don’t bother to dispute it. So really, smokers have no personal freedom rights unless they go off and do their thing where there are no other people!
However, what I do resent is unilateral and Draconian action that fails to take alternatives into account and seeks no compromise. In the case of the wood-burning stoves even the stove industry itself does not dispute the fact that particulate pollution in the Winter is a major source of smog and a severe irritant to those with compromised respiratory systems (asthmatics, allergics, cancer patients, etc.). However, the City refuses to consider compromise solutions such as EPA certified stoves with catalytic converters, the burning of bio-logs, etc. They say enforcement would be too difficult. It is that recalcitrance that I find stupid.
By: Steve on March 5, 2009
at 10:04 am
Sorry but your assumptions are faulty. It’s none of your business at all if I smoke presuming that I get private health insurance. My premiums are based on my risk so I don’t see how you’re affected. And it’s only partly your business if I’m on public health care. Why only partly ? Because when you start restricting lifestyle choices because you don’t want to bear possible costs, you might as well outlaw skiing since a known percentage of skiier will break something in any given year. Or pull motorcycles off the market entirely. Or forbid people from eating deep-fried food. There are millions of personal choices that carry costs to the public when you have universal health care. Where do you draw the line ?
About the wood-burning stoves and fireplaces, I concede absolutely nothing. So fucking what if it annoys a few people. What DOESN’T annoy at least SOME people ? Pretty much all behaviour does. But the larger point is that even if you’d agree to be reasonable and curtail your own burning of wood, you’ll get no cooperation from the health Nazis, no reciprocity of reason. They never concede anything because they’re not really concerned about health but rather about telling others how to live their lives. The Nanny State and all that.
I’m sorry you had a crappy neighbour (I have one now who uses a power saw outside of his apartment 5 hours a day, every day. Imagine how Assia feels with the kid in the house) but that’s a bit of reductio ad absurdum argument. You’re can’t possibly equate some asshole burning garbage at ground level next door with the a family enjoying a goddam wood fire in their living room. One’s being a fucking jerk, the other is something humans have been enjoying since man learned how to make fire.
It frankly worries me that so much of the population in the West has become so passive in the face of government encroachment into their daily lives. You’ll wake up one day, and, as they used to say in the Soviet Union, everything will be either compulsory or forbidden.
By: Your Cousin George on March 5, 2009
at 10:27 am
Well then this should really get your goat….the Quebec government is about to pass legislation for mandatory helmets on all ski hills for skiers and snowboarders!
As for eating of fried foods, well, Trans Fats have now been banned by many cities and States and Provinces, with a total ban coming shortly. These are the oils used to fry a variety of goods including French fries and doughnuts. Nothing traditional about this shit though, these are the product of modern chemistry intended to provide long shelf-life and high frying temperatures.
I suppose then that any public health initiative is an infringement on personal freedom in your book? The first mass vaccinations against polio were such an infringement since only a small percentage of people got polio, so why force everyone to have the vaccine?
How then do you reconcile any government initiative with respect to public health and well-being if its all an infringement on personal freedom?
By: Steve on March 5, 2009
at 2:25 pm
C’mon now, Steve, most vaccines take a second to administer, cost pretty much nothing, and don’t prevent you from doing or enjoying anything. It’s all upside, no downside. You give up a few minutes of your life in return for a lifetime of protection against a deadly desease. That’s hardly the same as some busybodies deciding that I can’t burn wood at home or that I have to wear a helmet on the slopes.
A lot of the things in life that give pleasure are bad for you in one way or another, and that’s what adults are supposed to do; decide for themselves on the cost/benefit of certain courses of action. Doesn’t it strike you as rather odd that you’re supposedly mature enough to vote for your leaders, enroll in a profession that might get you killed, yet can’t be trusted with buying liquor after certain hours, or smoking grass, or even riding your bike without a helmet. Government encroachment in peoples’ lives turns citizens into wards of the state, and the state is not your friend.
By: Your Cousin George on March 6, 2009
at 3:17 am
Very interesting tid bit about bone marrow. I love to eat the marrow in chicken bones and in osso bucco, I’ve been eating it for the last 50 years and I’m not the worst for it.As to fireplaces they do cause a lot of pollution and we have to start somewhere to eliminate it.
By: Irving K on March 8, 2009
at 9:31 am