Mobs:

The presence of those ugly mobs at the US presidential inauguration deserves some comment.

Where did all those unemployables come from?

We all know from experience that competent people do not join mobs. They don't need to. Their energy goes into doing something useful.

It was obvious from the gutter language, signage and antics among the marchers that there were few, if any, competent individuals among them.

It would be quite correct to describe them as pack animals too cowardly to go it alone.

The Feminist Factor::

Interesting item in today's media tells of a bunch of Canadian women crossing the border to join their American sisterhood in trying to trash the upcoming presidential inauguration.

Apparently, the feminist rabble, thwarted in their campaign to boost one of their own to the US presidency, is not yet ready to give up.

They fail to recognize that their bunching up around Hillary at all of the media events during the presidential campaign could have contributed significantly to her defeat.

It is not far-fetched to see this as a situation which might be viewed by the US electorate as yet another ugly pressure mob determined to push their crazy ideas onto everyone else.

It is far-fetched to blame Putin and the Russians with Hillary's defeat. Despite the outgoing US president's petulant parting shots, there is less and less credible evidence that British and Russian undercover spooks were out to get her.

What's more than likely is that the electorate could not accept a president surrounded by all those tearful militant feminists determined to insert one of their own into the Oval office. It is unlikely that her actual suitability for the post was ever an issue in their minds.

That's how out-of-touch with reality such narrowly-focused activist mobs have grown in the US and Canada. It is almost certain that their aggressive antics made it clear to the US voters that a Trump is sorely needed.

Aided by the left wing media's persistent campaign to accentuate the negatives and ignore the positives in their creative news accounts, the incoming president is beginning to look very good and their heroes very shoddy.

To their credit, the majority of the US electors proved they are not out of touch with reality.

Cross-marketing?.

Winter grade tires suitable for deep snow must have deep, coarse lugs. The rubber should be stiff rather than soft.

Winter grade tires suitable for salty slush should have grooves radiating away from the center line to channel the slush outward. This allows maximum contact between rubber and road at highway speeds.

Tires suitable for ice pellets over a few inches deep would probably work best if they were deep-lugged, no particular rubber preference.

Tires suitable for black ice...Oh, wait. There are no winter-grade tires suitable for black ice.

Back during the '50s one of the tire manufacturers did come out with tires that worked well on glare ice. Only problem was, they were useless in deep snow, ice pellets or slush.

If I recall correctly, they consisted of finely sliced, very soft rubber arranged in tightly-spaced radial hoops, something like spiral-sliced hams, only with very thin slices. Apparently, these treads were meant to spread and deform for maximum adhesion, something like the underpads on a gecko's feet.

They worked, but were useless for any other road conditions and deteriorated very quickly. Even though black ice is by far the most dangerous of winter road conditions, they did not go into production.

One other stab at producing tires suitable for ice appeared in the late '60s. It consisted of winter-grade lugs with carbide  cleats inserted in the treads. That worked, but too many windshields were destroyed by flying cleats dislodged through wear and highway speeds. Also, there was unacceptable road surface wear. Complaints from road maintenance authorities put a stop to that.

It should be obvious that those winter-grade tires the Ontario insurance companies have been maneuvered into promoting are designed to sell everyone an extra, and unnecessary set of tires and maybe wheels, too.

There is no such thing as tires suitable for all winter weather conditions. The closest thing is all-weather formulas, which the tire people have been selling to responsible motorists for over 50 years. The earliest versions that actually worked well were the Custom Suburbanites. I forget if they came from Good Year or Firestone.

The insurance involvement is the equivalent of a marketing scam designed to scare people into buying another set of tires. And after that, also storage space for that extra set of wheels for people with no extra storage space.

And what's in it for the insurance companies? Well, an easy excuse to jack up customers' premium rates at the slightest provocation, of course.

Apparently some savvy marketer figured this would be an easy sell to the Ontario electorate. It's possible they consulted with the politicians on that one.

Quiet Armageddon:

Every day it looks less and less like mankind's Armageddon is going to be a violent event as predicted in the Bible.

It will happen quietly. So quietly, in fact,  that we will not see it coming.

It has begun already. It is a slow process. Every time we improve our technology, it reduces our evolution over the millennia by  another notch.

Instead of making our lives a little easier, improvements in technology reduce our need for abilities which the process of natural selection has developed in us.

There are many examples all around us, but the most obvious at the moment is what's happening to our cars. Those self-driving cars with technology that threatens to replace all human input are a real horror story.

Every time the engineers make an improvement in a car that does things better than its driver, that driver becomes a little more redundant, simply because it is no longer necessary for him to be smart, or vigilant, or watchful, or co-ordinated, or even awake in transit.

There are people out there who think our electronic gadgetry is just great. They see a rosy future full of leisure where our electronic technology is going to prevent us from risking our lives in highway situations, crossing streets or in our homes.

Never does it enter their minds that these new developments will also prevent people from developing any survival skills. The real horror stories are those where unevolved, incompetent people will still go on and reproduce, passing on those questionable genetics to future generations.

If these technological "improvements" continue, as they are almost guaranteed to do, we will eventually replace ourselves with our technology, which is programmed to do things correctly with no effort, no thinking involved.

Thus, survival of the fittest will be neutralized. Any individual, regardless how incompetent, will be able to survive with the aid of technology.

Our planet will eventually become populated by incompetents, digitoids and mechanoids. Our future generations will quietly dwindle and disappear unspectacularly, unchallenged.

The Carbon Tax:

Saskatchewan's Premier Brad Wall seems mystified with what the Prime Minister hopes to accomplish with his carbon tax.

An item in the electronic media this week said Trudeau attempted to explain to Wall that the money collected through the carbon tax may be made revenue-neutral. He said it would be returned to each province and the provincial administrations would then be free to give it back to the people from whom the taxes were extracted in the first place.

Upon hearing that, Wall is reported to have asked Trudeau what's the point in this kind of a political go-around?

Wall is right. There is no point, unless one considers the creation of another big political bureaucracy employing people that need to be rewarded for their party generosity. As usual, you and I would be required to pay their wages through taxation.

Young Trudeau's contempt for Wall's concerns, referring derisively to his constituents as "your farmers" is no surprise. It runs in the family. His father, who also had problems dealing with western Canada, was reported giving westerners the middle finger salute on occasion during the '70s.

Not exactly Prime Ministerial behaviour.

In retaliation, p'd-off westerners took to spelling Trudeau by transposing the second and third letters.

Not exactly politically correct, but playground level arguments involving supposedly honorable members seldom are.