Monday 11 January 2021

Wills (and their Won'ts) - Information from the Web

https://www.legalwills.ca/executor_responsibilities

  1. Once the will is located, it should be given to the estate's attorney. Instead of reading the will out loud, the estate's attorney sends copies of the will to anyone who may have an interest in it.

Post 2101-

An executor has the authority from the probate court to manage the affairs of the estate. Executors can use the money in the estate in whatever way they determine best for the estate and for fulfilling the decedent's wishes.Mar 12, 2019

The most fundamental principle of estate law is that executors are trustees: they ... Most of the key features of estate law, and how the courts handle estate ... Unless something to the contrary is expressly provided in the willsome of the key ... the joint bank account is held in trust by the survivor for the benefit of the estate, not ...






Saturday 25 April 2020

Confessions of an Earth Day Slacker

-Rex Murphy, National Post
Editor: We are placing this article here because it is a great source for aspiring journalists or even just readers to learn a style of writing for educational/entertainment purposes. No profit is made by placing this article that was not written by us. 

This is one of the best, if not the best article written with tongue firmly implanted in both cheeks, of course one at a time and taking care of the social distance from one cheek to the other, just in case! An ounce of protection (or metric equivalent) is worth a pound (or metric equivalent) of cure!  

And now back to the article by Rex Murphy
Like so many others who are consumed by the threat of global warming, the imminent extinction of all life on the planet, a fate pursued with such fury by the oil cartels, I fear I have been a little slack, even lapsed, in my Greenitude this year. Stalwart warmist that I am, I believe all must play their part to put a stay to that dread event. Alas — this is confessional — I haven’t lived up to my own sultry beliefs.
Take Earth Hour almost a month ago.
Naturally I followed the available protocols for that precious 60 minutes. I turned the toaster down to the dim “5” setting (I like a bit of toast in the evening, usually much darker). For recreation I watched a “rerun” instead of a new TV show, thus reducing my “carbon eyeprint.” And, more seriously (lights off in the living room as per usual) I tried a new trick with the candles, lighting them, after the first one, off each other rather than, as in more abandoned years, with one match for each taper.
I turned the toaster down to the dim “5” setting

Now doubters may think this was a precious little effort, and maybe so. But by my calculation my regimen may have added another 20 whole seconds to the life of this Earth, before it inevitably perspires into oblivion from global warming. Holding off on the matches alone probably added 15 seconds. I had a lot of candles.
Still, I know I should have done better; maybe told the boat builders in the basement to lay down their electric tools, and turned off the second generator I use to warm the backyard pool. And, truth to tell, I still feel a little sheepish — if that’s the word here — about streaking off to New Zealand on a monstrous 767 airplane the very next morning.
It was the same three weeks later with the even more solemn observances of Earth Day, for us believers the most precious 24 hours in our planet’s 365-day orbit around Father Sun.

Members of the Asian Citizen’s Center for Environment and Health perform during an Earth Day event in Seoul on April 22, 2020. Jung Yeon-je/AFP via Getty Images

Most times I try my best to Live the Liturgy. This year in the morning I went out and had coffee and a chat with a couple of weeping willows. Tried to cheer ’em up. No go. Genuflected every time a Tesla swished by. Went by the vegan market and picked up some dried kelp. Mixed with a little grass (not that grass, from the lawn) it makes a great incense for meditation sessions, and offers an aromatherapeutic remedy for my many allergies and the onset of what I fear may be Climate PTSD. I did my yoga routine in front of a privately sculpted icon of the blessed David Attenborough, to the calming moans of a CD of whale music.
I paced around the apartment, solitary as all are during this terrible plague (thought by some to be a punishment for Mother Earth), muttering invocations to Father Nye, Bishop Suzuki, Cardinal Monbiot and Pope Gore, and in between chanting versicles from the latest psalter of the Viridian Church — Cows and Flatulence: their Expulsions, our Extinction. One of the great tracts of our time. Spiritually I was in tune with the day, but in my heart I knew it was less than I should be doing.
I contemplated the long, deep and mysterious traditions of Earth Day, how it was first celebrated. Not by the girlfriend-murdering Ira Einhorn in Philadelphia in 1970. A modern heresy. But long ago in the mists of time.
Most times I try my best to Live the Liturgy

It was hooded priests in the order of the Druids at the temple we know as Stonehenge on the great plain of Salisbury who put this marker on the calendar. It was the Druids who drew up the first carbon tax. It was they who gave us Earth Day’s Green Scriptures. They were the prophets who entered upon the parchment scrolls the first 100 Tips for Greener Living for the busy Hunter-Gather.
“Does your family need two bison this winter?” “That sheep pen out back? Is it just ‘status seeking’ because you heard the London crowd had them?” Just two of their clever notions.
Other great innovations emerged from the circle of giant stones and the priestly class who worshipped within its sacred circumference. Was Stonehenge a megalithic climate model? Certainly it was Stonehenge, with the co-operation of The Viking Long Boat Tour Agency (Oar and Sail, not Oil), that convened the first ever Conference of the Parties to Save our Warming Earth. Over 5,000 delegates (population was low in those days, but the gathering would swell) and half as many scribes attended, coming away with pledges from all tribes to cut their carbon emissions by 30 per cent by the year 1150 BC.

The ancient neolithic monument of Stonehenge is viewed from a hot air balloon on Sept. 7, 2016, in Wiltshire, England. Matt Cardy/Getty Images

It was also, and this is important, the very first set of carbon-emissions targets that everybody knew were never to be met, setting the pattern for centuries of IPCC conferences yet to come.
Only one note of controversy. The delegation from the famous Thunberg clan all travelled haughtily, each one by his or her own private ox. One youngling, yclept Greta, was even said to have a spare ox. How dare they, said the head Druid.
The Druids as warrior warmists faced two great challenges: fire and the wheel.
The first came from the early industrialists, ravening capitalists the horde of them. They invented the stone grate. The planet was on the threshold of the age when people started thinking it was a good thing, maybe lord forbid a right, to keep warm, and a right (gasp) to cook.

Druids, pagans and revellers gather in the centre of Stonehenge as they take part in a winter solstice ceremony at the neolithic monument on Dec. 21, 2016. Matt Cardy/Getty Images

And who would supply the fuel? Why the exploiters and deniers, the peat cartels and the bogland syndicates, Earth-haters and denialists the pack of them.
Then came the wheel. It would take people off their feet. Opponents determined to stop the menace in its not-yet-formed tracks. The anti-wheel movement, championed by paleolithic activists, made a big thing of it.
Stop the Wheel was very big in its day. A proleptic version of the great Ban the Pipeline debate of our times. Raised a lot of chickens too, for the environmental cause.
But this is another story. If I can rev up my slacker’s commitment to the cause of causes, maybe it can be told next Earth Day.

Tuesday 12 November 2019

Niagara Falls Nature Club & Peninsula Field Naturalists


The Niagara Falls Nature Club has an active program to help people understand nature! [http://niagarafallsnatureclub.org/]

The Indoor Program is scheduled on the Second Wednesday of each month from September to May at 7:00 p.m. at the Niagara Falls Public Library, 4848 Victoria Avenue, Niagara Falls ON.  Doors open by 6:40 for refreshments and social time.

Wednesday Evening Walks start in late April and extend to September.
See websie at [http://niagarafallsnatureclub.org/events/wednesday-evening-walks/]

Outings occur all year long on certain days.  These take the form of day trips and an annual Weekend Long trip. 

We also have in Niagara the Peninsula Field Naturalists program. 

PENINSULA FIELD NATURALISTS

ADVOCATE,
EDUCATE and
PARTICIPATE
in the conservation of natural resources and green spaces in the Niagara Region and elsewhere.
Meetings held monthly
September - May
Niagara Region Headquarters
Committee Room 4
1815 Sir Isaac Brock Way
(formerly St. David’s Road West)
St Catharines, ON, Canada


Our outings continue throughout the year and there are plenty of family-friendly activities coming up this spring and summer.
Check our events and come on out and join us!
Most activities are FREE,
and all are welcome!

Birding , Hikes etc.








Friday 11 October 2019

Idiotic Environmental Predictions

[Editor:This article was written by Professor Walter E Williams but captures the facts better than 99.999% of the media which does not know enough to research truth but simply believes the panic-makers and joins the chorus of "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

And now for the article by Professor Williams ....

 Idiotic Environmental Predictions
The Competitive Enterprise Institute has published a new paper, “Wrong Again: 50 Years of Failed Eco-pocalyptic Predictions.”  

Keep in mind that many of the grossly wrong environmentalist predictions were made by respected scientists and government officials. My question for you is: If you were around at the time, how many government restrictions and taxes would you have urged to avoid the predicted calamity?

As reported in The New York Times (Aug. 1969) Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Erhlich warned: “The trouble with almost all environmental problems is that by the time we have enough evidence to convince people, you’re dead. We must realize that unless we’re extremely lucky, everybody will disappear in a cloud of blue steam in 20 years.”

In 2000, Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at University of East Anglia’s climate research unit, predicted that in a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”


 In 2004, the U.S. Pentagon warned President George W. Bush that major European cities would be beneath rising seas.


 Britain will be plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020.

In 2008, Al Gore predicted that the polar ice cap would be gone in a mere 10 years.

A U.S. Department of Energy study led by the U.S. Navy predicted the Arctic Ocean would experience an ice-free summer by 2016.
In May 2014, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius declared during a joint appearance with Secretary of State John Kerry that “we have 500 days to avoid climate chaos.”

Peter Gunter, professor at North Texas State University, predicted in the spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness: 

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions. … By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

Ecologist Kenneth Watt’s 1970 prediction was, “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000.” He added, “This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Mark J. Perry, scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus, cites 18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970.

 This time it’s not about weather. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated that humanity would run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold and silver would be gone before 1990. Kenneth Watt said, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate … that there won’t be any more crude oil.”


There were grossly wild predictions well before the first Earth Day, too. In 1939, the U.S. Department of the Interior predicted that American oil supplies would last for only another 13 years.

In 1949, the secretary of the interior said the end of U.S. oil supplies was in sight.

Having learned nothing from its earlier erroneous energy claims, in 1974, the U.S. Geological Survey said that the U.S. had only a 10-year supply of natural gas.

 However, the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated that as of Jan. 1, 2017, there were about 2,459 trillion cubic feet of dry natural gas in the United States. That’s enough to last us for nearly a century. The United States is the largest producer of natural gas worldwide.


Today’s wild predictions about climate doom are likely to be just as true as yesteryear’s

The major difference is today’s Americans are far more gullible and more likely to spend trillions fighting global warming. And the only result is that we’ll be much poorer and less free.


Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.






Sunday 30 June 2019

Gender Identity Confusion?

Editor's Notes:
For  those of us who are of mature years, can you believe that children are being taught "gender identity" in which they are taught that their gender may not coincide with their biological gender? Can you believe that a 6 year female student may be told that she may not be a "girl" in her gender identity?

In an effort to be "fair" to all children, does confusing those who already knew what gender they were born aid to enlightenment or stupidity?

This article is preserved here for the enlightenment, research, of those who may not have had the occasion to know about this article. 
 

Barbara Kay: When gender identity education and theory goes wrong

A family is asking a school board to ensure that lessons do 'not devalue, deny, or undermine … the female gender identity'

A family has lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario over the distress their six-year-old daughter experienced when informed by a teacher that gender is fluid and “girls are not real.”

In his recent commentary in these pages on the risks associated with the teaching of gender theories to elementary schoolchildren, Jordan Peterson referenced a column I wrote in another publication. The column concerned a human rights complaint, filed by Pamela and Jason Buffone on behalf of their daughter, “N,” against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board for discrimination on the basis of gender and gender identity in contravention of the Human Rights Code.


Peterson faithfully summarized the story that led to the complaint, but readers may be interested in a few points about the complaint and the response from the school board’s lawyer that Peterson omitted as not directly salient to the thrust of his thesis.

To recap briefly: the Buffones’ daughter "N", six years old, and by their account a happy girl (comfortable in her skin, adored school), was abruptly plunged into considerable distress when informed by her teacher (young, three years experience) during a session on gender identity that gender is fluid and untethered to biology, and that “girls are not real” and “boys are not real.”

The lessons continued and so did N’s distress
The lessons continued and so did N’s distress, to the point of asking to see a doctor about her fears. The Buffones say in their claim that “they were concerned about the impact (on) N’s view of herself as a girl. Prior to (the teacher’s) discussions with the Grade One class, N had consistently identified as a girl and had not previously expressed uncertainty or discontent with her gender identity and biological sex.”

 The Buffones had asked the teacher to affirm N’s identity as a girl — that is, reassure her that her identity as female was “real” in order to relieve her anxiety. Nothing that the Buffones asserted was denied by the school or its officials, but their request was rebuffed out of hand, first by the teacher, who said her lessons reflected “a change within society,” then by the principal, and all the way up the ladder to the superintendent of the school board and the curriculum superintendent.

 They removed N to another school, where these gender theories are not taught, and where her mother told me she has recovered her wonted buoyancy.



In their Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario claim, the Buffones request as a remedy that the tribunal order the school board to ensure that classroom instruction does “not devalue, deny, or undermine in any way the female gender identity,” and that parents be informed “when lessons on gender identity will take place, including the teaching objectives and the materials that will be or have been used for such lessons.”

The response of the school board’s lawyers, who asked for dismissal of the complaint, state the claim has no reasonable basis for success. The lawyers note that teachers’ right to teach gender identity is endorsed by the minister of education, and that the “age-appropriateness of a classroom discussion does not engage a Code-protected prohibited ground.” That is to say, even if N was adversely affected by the teacher’s lessons — and they do not deny that this is the case — she has no grounds for redress according to the Human Rights Code.

If the school board is successful in its bid for dismissal, it means that the words “gender identity” and “gender expression” do not apply to everyone. They apply only to those whose gender identity does not synchronize with their biology — the protection of a biologically female child to identify as a girl would not be protected. Feelings of distress among the very small percentage of children whose gender identity differs from their biological sex must be alleviated at all cost. If that cost involves distress or confusion in the vast majority of other children like N, that is not “discrimination.”

The Buffones are not buying this (while acknowledging the human rights tribunal may well do so). The Ontario Human Rights Code takes a fairly broad view of discrimination. It states, for example, that a “poisoned environment” is a form of discrimination. The Buffones are “going to provide evidence that the manner in which (the teacher) was teaching the concept of gender identity resulted in a poisoned environment.”
It is clear that something is going terribly wrong with regard to gender teaching in Ontario classrooms.
I wish the Buffones well, and so do many other people. On social media many people applauded the Buffones’ courage in going public on behalf of other parents with similar stories who haven’t the confidence to take such a definitive step.

One respondent, who wishes anonymity, told me her son’s story, which bore similarities to N’s in that the child had never shown the slightest sign of gender confusion before lessons on gender theory began in school, with children being encouraged to identify along a spectrum rather than asserting they were either “girl” or “boy.” Out of the blue (I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard this phrase used in this connection), he came home one day and announced he was “pansexual” and a “demi-girl.”

The parents took their son to see a psychologist. When she was told the name of the school and teacher, the therapist exclaimed, “You are the seventh set of parents from that class who have come to me with this problem!”

It is clear that something is going terribly wrong with regard to gender teaching in Ontario classrooms. Ontario must set up an investigative task force, composed of disinterested educators, disinterested gender researchers and parents, to objectively evaluate the teaching of gender identity in public schools.

• Email: kaybarb@gmail.com

Sunday 16 June 2019

Carbon Dioxide - The MORE the BETTER!

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is not carbon – and the difference is more than just a matter of knowing enough chemistry to distinguish an element from a compound. It's a matter of distinguishing a black solid that, in the form of fine soot particles, can cause respiratory diseases from an odorless, colorless gas that is non-toxic at any concentration and non-dangerous at concentrations 20 times the current 400 parts per million (ppm) in our atmosphere.

To call CO2 "carbon pollution" is not only bad chemistry and toxicology but also bad biology.
Carbon dioxide is essential to plant growth. The higher its concentration, the better plants grow. A study by researchers at the Technische Universität München found forests around the world growing up to 70 percent faster today than 50 years ago because of increased CO2.
As thousands of empirical studies have found, on average, every doubling of CO2 concentration in the atmosphere causes about a 35 percent increase in plant growth efficiency. Plants grow better in wetter and drier soils and in warmer and colder temperatures, widening their ranges and increasing their adaptability to climate changes, reducing the risk of biodiversity loss. They make better use of soil nutrients, resist diseases and pests better, and improve the ratio of fruit to fiber.
The consequence is more food for people and animals. Most important, it means more affordable food for the poor.
review of refereed literature on the subject found the "monetary value of this benefit amount[ed] to a total sum of $3.2 trillion over the 50-year period 1961–2011. Projecting the monetary value … forward … reveals it will likely bestow an additional $9.8 trillion on crop production between now and 2050."
So any argument to reduce CO2 emissions must offset the fact that increasing CO2's concentration in the atmosphere enhances food production.
Advocates have their answer. It's all the negative "impacts" (note the pejorative) of the warming rising CO2 will cause. That takes us to the nub of the controversy: How much does added CO2 warm the atmosphere?
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests "climate sensitivity" (atmospheric warming in response to doubled CO2 concentration) of 1.5 C to 4.5 C.
That estimate of rests solely on the output of computer climate models. Their output is not data (raw observations of the external world) but hypotheses. So climate models' simulations aren't evidence of anything, they're guesses to be tested. And they fail.
On average, they simulate twice the warming observed over the relevant period. Over 95 percent simulate more warming than observed, so their errors are not random (evenly distributed above and below observations) but driven, intentionally or not, by bias. And none simulated the complete absence of warming over the last 18 years and 8 months.
Not surprisingly, top climate scientists have, as Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry has tracked on her blog, been reassessing "climate sensitivity," basing their estimates not on models but on empirical observation. They're tending, as the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation reported last year, toward estimates in the range of 0.3 C to 1.0 C (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) or 1.25 C to 3.0 C with a best estimate of 1.75˚ (Lewis and Crok). With those lower ranges, the "impacts" of "climate change" dwindle, and benefits might well outweigh costs.
So the models are wrong. Therefore they provide no rational basis for predicting future "global average temperature," or for calculating the "social cost of 'carbon' [dioxide]," or for any policy.
Reducing CO2 emissions would require less dependence on fossil fuels, which now provide over 85 percent of all the energy humans consume and are likely to continue to do so through probably the end of this century. But they are our best source for the abundant, affordable, reliable energy indispensable to any society's growing and staying out of poverty. Forcing the substitution of wind, solar and biofuels means raising the cost and reducing both the quantity and the reliability of energy available, which means slowing, stopping or reversing mankind's growth out of poverty.
It follows that we shouldn't embrace any such policy.
E. Calvin Beisner, Ph.D.
Founder and National Spokesman
The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.
Ancient Trees



“They studied giant redwoods, the tallest trees on earth in Humboldt County California to reach these conclusions. They hypothesized and verified experimentally that as trees reached the height of 425 they could pump less and less water and nutrients up to new growth at that level. No current tree in the world has reached this height.
In effect, maximum tree growth is limited by gravity and friction.

Scientist George Koch and colleagues believe that they have established the upper limit for tree height. In an article entitled “Study Limits Maximum Tree Height”, by Jonathan Amos, which appeared in the BBC News Online in April 2004, that maximum tree height is about 425 feet.

Back in 1938, some scientists were speculating that the earth was shrinking and gravity along with it because of a huge petrified pine tree, well over three hundred feet tall found in the Rainbow Petrified Forest in Arizona.

In article sub-titled “Recent Discoveries in Petrified Forest Leads to Belief This Old Globe Is Gradually Contracting” (The Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 13. 1938) various scientists discussed the idea that at the time this petrified tree with its huge root system lived on the earth, its circumference was approximately 30,000 miles rather than the current 25,000. The larger earth would have exerted an attenuated (weaker) gravitational force on the trees and animals of that time.

According to the scientists quoted in the article,



“Since the newly discovered petrified tree Is of the Araucarias species, a form of pine which, when its sap is running, is of considerable weight, it probably weighed per lineal foot as much as modern-day smaller trees, and therefore seems to indicate that the magnetism and force of gravity of the earth at the’ time it grew were more dissipated, an indication that the earth itself possessed a greater diameter.”

These petrified trees had been transformed into onyx, jasper, agate, carnelian and chalcedony. Today, the giant redwoods are the growth champions. The various varieties of Araucarias would not have been expected to reach the same exalted heights.

The discovery that caused this scientific introspection occurred in 1938.

What the authors had overlooked in finding a petrified 300 foot plus tree of the Araucarias variety and finding themselves perplexed by it, is that a much larger tree had already been discovered in —Texas by federal geologists.

had been discovered in a petrified forest in Texas. According to an article in the Sunday, January 23, 1927 Port Arthur News, a petrified tree of the

Based on common sense, experience and the scientific article quoted herein establishing 425 feet as the upper limit for tree height, clearly something anomalous was going on in the distant past. Perhaps, more properly the earth’s current gravity is the anomaly.

According to the article, the forest is situated in a virtually inaccessible region in a valley of the Big Bend, nearly 100 miles from the nearest railroad spur at that time.

The forest was immodestly referred to as the greatest Petrified Forest known to man.

Mere stumps of trees rose 100 to 150 feet into the air. A thick covering of volcanic ash and pumice stone is said to have covered the trees and it is thought by the geologists/discoverers to have come from a volcano in the nearby Chisos mountains.

“One tree trunk measured 896 feet in length and the upright trunks are so large that they appear from a distance to be great symmetrical columns of natural rock. These federal geologists tell the -story. They have visited this distant valley, which is split by a deep arroyo leading into the Rio Grande.”

Clearly, if what this 1927 story reports is true, that 900 foot tree is more than twice that was projected by some scientists working in that field, as the maximum tree size obtainable in today’s gravity conditions. This means that gravity was somehow attenuated in the “distant” past.”

(I won’t rest until all of the greater-ancestors are found. Side Note: I was given a short list by an evolutionist during a debate and Redwood trees was on his list, previously it was on my difficulty-list along with rabbits, blue whales, as well as animals with giant in front of their name.) Chris L Lesley

Ooparts & Ancient High Technology website: http://s8int.com/-

by Greater Ancestors World Museum on Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 10:35pm