Just recently, I watched a presentation on Urthecast.  It blew me away.  “By developing the first high-definition streaming video platform of Earth, UrtheCast plans to change the way we view the world” and they will.  The global population, web surfers, smartphone users, agriculturists, adults, kids, and in general everyone, will be able to watch live events unfold in real time.  The positive feedback that UrtheCast will receive will be endless.  From serving as an educational tool to providing environmental monitoring services and humanitarian relief organizations with an extra tool in their relief fund; UrtheCast will revolutionize our world.

However, behind all the new advancements UrtheCast is bringing the world; have we gone too far?  UrtheCast will produce “a longitudinal look at various locations (that will be imaged about 16 times/day)“. It’s as if we no longer have a say in our privacy.  The UrtheCast camera will produce high quality images that can make large objects and groups of people recognizable as explained by this video, Orbit of ISS & Cameras.  The only places that we will be rest assured that we aren’t being filmed is under the roofs of our houses or other sheltered areas.  So what about when we are outside?  The ground pixel size is near 1.1 metres.

To ensure our privacy; are we expected to check every single time the UrtheCast will be filming over our region so that we will know to stay indoors then?  As if reality tv wasn’t enough.  It seems that UrtheCast will transform this whole world into one big reality tv show.  I understand the use of UrtheCast for educational purposes and for government data; however I do not fully understand and agree with allowing this data to go public.

The recent vote in Washington State to legalize marijuana will have a devastating impact on BC’s marijuana-growing industry and its economy.  Although the US is not legalizing marijuana on the federal level (it’s stil against the federal law); it is highly unlikely that the federal government will take any action against growing marijuana.  Washington is licensing the growth of marijuana for sale.

This could all have a huge impact on BC’s economy.  It comes as no real surprise that marijuana is “probably the province’s biggest cash crop, estimated to bring in between $6 and $8 billion annually” making it the third or fourth largest money generator in BC.  Canada has the second largest pot market in America, coming in right after Mexico (60%); Canada has about 40% of the total American pot market.  Unfortunately, most states will probably jump on the bandwagon in legalizing marijuana after they see how much tax can be earned from it.

This will only further damage BC’s economy.  So how will the BC government react to all of this?  Will BC be one of the next regions in N. America to legalize marijuana or will we suffer the economic blows?  Even if marijuana is legalized in BC, will this be enough to save our economy considering the US will be more likely to buy marijuana from nearby?

Chris Williamson’s blog post, “A dark day for the world of snacks“, left me feeling a little shell-shocked.  It is shocking that Hostess Brands Inc. is filing for bankruptcy and abandoning its incredibly famous product, the Twinkie.  Luckily for Twinkie-lovers they will not actually have to say goodbye to Twinkies.

Tomorrow, Hostess Brands Inc. will actually be in a New York courtroom to sell its assets and go out of business.  Many other companies have shown interest in bidding on fragments of Hostess.  As for Twinkies, John Pottow, a University of Michigan Law School professor specializing in bankruptcy stated that “there’s a huge amount of goodwill with the commercial brand name.   It’s quite conceivable that they can sell the name and recipe for Twinkies to a company that wants to make them.”  For now, the 500 bakery outlet stores are remaining open for several days in order to sell the last products.

Unfortunately for Twinkie lovers however, unless they are able to stock up on Twinkies before the bakery outlet stores close; there is a high chance that they won’t be reunited with their favorite dessert for a whole year.  Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain will “appoint a company that specializes in liquidation to sell the assets, and the sale probably will take six months to a year to complete“.  Best of luck Twinkie lovers!

With the recent release of the Cohen Report, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is finding itself in a sticky situation.  Trying to maintain the economic viability of Canada’s fishing industry while ensuring the sustainability of our BC wild salmon; the DFO is stuck at a crossroad.  Currently, an issue that is being highlighted by biologist, Alexandra Morton, scientist, David Suzuki and other marine experts such as Rick Routledge; is the discovery of the ISA virus in BC’s wild salmon. The ISA virus kills the organs of salmon, depletes their immune systems, and often results in the death of the salmon.

In other regions such as Chile, the ISA virus caused 15,000 employees to lose their jobs and caused a $2 billion loss in the fishing industry.  These instances should act as a warning to BC, but why is the Canadian government still allowing this lethal virus to be transferred from farm fish to the wild salmon?  Well ignorantly enough, the DFO has asserted that the ISA virus poses a minimal threat on BC salmon as the number of recorded fatalities from the ISA virus is very low.  Chile, however, experienced a very similar situation in which the ISA virus was originally non-lethal and then suddenly became virulent, killing approximately 70% of the farmed salmon.  I believe that it is imperative that the DFO recognizes the danger of the ISA virus in BC wild salmon and calls for the immediate removal of all open-water salmon farms in BC waters (other sustainable farming practices include closed-containment salmon farms).  If action is not taken quickly, there is a good chance that the BC wild salmon population will cease to exist.

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After reading Sachin Phadkar’s blog, “BYOB to restaurants – who does it benefit?”; I began to ponder whether this new law that allowed guests to bring their own bottles of wine would hurt or help the restaurant industry.  I do not completely agree with Sachin’s prediction of the effects that the new BYOW law will have on the restaurant industry; although I do agree with Sachin that restaurants do not fall into one homogeneous group.

I strongly believe that the implication of the BYOW law will help the restaurant industry as a whole.  Inexpensive restaurants that target the middle-class will be able to compete with the more high end restaurants throughout British Columbia.  People with average incomes are going to be more willing to go out for dinner if they can bring their own bottle of wine and pay a small corkage fee (determined  by the restaurant); as opposed to paying for a ridiculously overpriced bottle of wine.

In contrast, Sachin seems to think that the BYOW law will hurt fine dining restaurants as they would lose the revenue from alcohol, a big player in the fine dining experience.  Well this is not exactly true.  For restaurants that generate a large percentage of their revenue from alcohol, Rich Coleman, the Minister Responsible for Housing and in charge of liquor control, has made it clear that BYOW is optional and restaurants will be able to choose if they want to participate.  With that key factor in mind, there is no denying that the new BYOW law will give “industry the needed flexibility to get people out and din[ing] more” (Tostenson).

The Canadian Competition Law monitors the reliability of advertisements and provides consequences for misleading advertising.  This Act requires that companies be able to prove the performance of their product using an “adequate and proper test” before making a claim.  By doing so, this Act is diminishing a company’s ability to make a false claim about it’s product.  For example, the Nutella company is no longer able to persuade parents to buy their children Nutella by advertising it as a healthy food since it contained dangerous levels of saturated fat and was more than 55 percent processed sugar.  With these fines and strict laws in place, I hope to see the frequency of false advertisements decrease in Canada and internationally.

Many people are seemingly impressed with the unexpected 52,000 jobs that were added to the Canadian economy this past month.  To Canada’s delight, the gain was more than the roughly 10,000 new jobs that economists polled by Bloomberg were expecting.  At face value, this new discovery seems both promising and encouraging for Canadian citizens; however, should we really be impressed?

Notice how reporters are not taking into account the population of Canada.  From 2010 to 2011, Canada’s population has risen from 34.1262 million to 34.4828 million making the growth in Canadian jobs look very small in comparison.  With this large increase in Canada’s population, the demand for certain goods in Canada will also rise, causing supply to rise (or vise versa).  Simple logic tells us, that in order for that to happen, companies and services will require more employees.  So the real question should not be whether or not the number of jobs in Canada has increased; but rather we should be looking at the unemployment rate.  By doing this, Canadians will realize that this discovery is not so exciting as Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti noted there are now five unemployed workers for every job opening across the country. “Our economy is sluggish and there is very little prospect on the horizon for real job growth,” Georgetti said in a release.

Samsung, the world’s largest mobile phone producer, is quickly losing face.  Just days after being ruled against competing smartphone maker Apple and losing a billion dollars; Samsung is now being accused of child labour and other labour abuses.  It’s hard to believe that while Samsung has been building world-wide, trusted relationships with clients; the company has also managed to completely disregard the lives of the factory workers.  According to an investigation done by China Labour Watch, Samsung factory workers have been subjected to unpaid work, gender discrimination, verbal and physical abuse, and many other labor abuses.  To add to the headache, Samsung is also facing accusations of “not tak[ing] any actions to prevent the hiring of child workers even when they [did] know about them.”  In a frantic attempt to save their reputation, Samsung is soft-pedalling the real issue by stating that some of their factories have “inadequate management and potentially unsafe practices”.  Although the company is denying any accusations of child workers (under age 16), Samsung has “so nobly” vowed to end contracts in which policies, such as labour abuse, have been violated.