Reduce, Reuse, Recycle in Nanaimo BC

Spruce Up Your Home with a Fresh Paint Job

Spring is often considered an ideal time to get your home painted for several reasons:

•  Mild weather: Spring usually brings mild temperatures and lower humidity levels, making it an ideal time to paint. Paint dries better in moderate temperatures and humidity, which can help ensure a better finish and reduce the risk of issues like cracking or peeling.
• Longer days: With longer days, you have more daylight to work with, which can help painters complete the job more quickly and efficiently.
• Improved curb appeal: Spring is a popular time for home sales, and a fresh coat of paint can help improve the curb appeal of your home. A well-painted exterior can make a positive first impression on potential buyers and may increase the value of your home.
• Preventive maintenance: Painting your home in the spring can also help prevent damage to the exterior of your home. Painting can help protect against moisture and the growth of mold and mildew, which can cause long-term damage if left untreated.

Getting your home painted in the spring can be a smart investment in both the appearance and maintenance of your home. More information on painting in Nanaimo.

 Recycling and Junk Removal in Nanaimo 

Living in Nanaimo, BC and in need of junk hauling and removal services? Look no further! Island Junk offers same-day services and special rates for property management companies in your area. Plus, all of our clients receive free donation drop-offs. Our expertise in the junk removal industry guarantees safe and efficient services for you, from electronics recycling and garden waste removal to estate cleanups and household garbage disposal.

When we arrive at your location, we'll sort through your junk to determine what can be recycled or donated. Our priority is to keep as much as possible out of landfills and repurpose items whenever possible. Usable items will be donated to local charitable organizations for free. This helps keep the environment clean and benefits those in need!

Not sure how to properly dispose of recyclable materials? Let us handle it! We can recycle all sorts of materials, including metals, electronics, paper, cardboard, chemicals, oils, tires, appliances, light bulbs, batteries, and many other items that shouldn't go in landfills. We also specialize in hazardous material disposal and construction waste removal.

Our trained team can handle everything from homes infested with bed bugs to contaminated commercial gear and hypodermic needles. We offer construction site clean-up, yard waste pick-up, home renovation debris hauling, and small demolition of backyard structures like sheds, fences, and patios. Our junk hauling services are fast, friendly, and cost-competitive. We know how to save you money and recycle as much as possible!

Genengineering Will Go Open Source

According to a judge dished out to Big Pharma, they cannot patent genes.

[Judge Robert] Sweet said he invalidated the patents because DNA's existence in an isolated form does not alter the fundamental quality of DNA as it exists in the body nor the information it encodes.

He rejected arguments that it was acceptable to grant patents on DNA sequences as long as they are claimed in the form of "isolated DNA."

"Many, however, including scientists in the fields of molecular biology and genomics, have considered this practice a `lawyer's trick' that circumvents the prohibitions on the direct patenting of the DNA in our bodies but which, in practice, reaches the same result," he said.

The judge said his findings were consistent with Supreme Court rulings that have established that purifying a product of nature does not mean it can be patented.

The ruling that could invalidate patents held on almost 20 percent of the human genome. There is a long-simmering debate within the biotech and scientific communities over whether it makes sense to patent genes. At this point, most scientists agree that patents on genes retard scientific innovation. When companies request a huge fee for somebody to develop medicines related to genes they own, it can cause real harm to people and researchers who can't afford the pharmaceutical companies' asking prices.

The AP continues:

Mary-Claire King, the University of Washington scientist who discovered the first breast cancer predisposition gene, BRCA-1, while at the University of California at Berkeley in 1990, called the ruling "very good news for women who are potential carriers" of cancer genes and their families.

"It will open the door to truly competitive testing. It will allow the science to drive the field instead of the monopolistic approach that has dominated," she said.

The technology to tinker is there, but there's no longer a reason to be proprietary about it as anyone can take the genes and tinker with them. Big Pharma needs to take a page from FOSS and ride the wave front of general innovation in the field of genetic engineering, bring products to market and benefit from the free help.

Surprises for 2010 (Part 1)

Here are some of my predictions as to what is going to surprise people and make a big splash-- let's tune in in 360+ days and check:

Air Superiority: In the battle of hydrogen vs. electric vs. gasoline, air powered vehicles will start to make inroads. Compression is at the heart of the internal combustion engine. Air compressors are very old technology: ask anyone who uses a nail gun. For the price of $200 or less you can get yourself a decent air compressor. Go to the gas station and while suckers are paying $1 per litre, you can run that air compressor for as long as you want for $1 in total. Air powered cars and motorcycles will start to debut in Europe then grudgingly in North America. The best part of air powered: zero emissions and if the compressor is powered from a hydro, wind or solar source it's totally zero emission.

Asia Will Produce The Killer App: There are too many good programmers who have cut their teeth on North American and European projects. Some of them will get together and have an Indian-only get together and buzz together something awesome and something made for their 2 billion neighbours. My vote is on a tool that combines the Mechanical Turk, Adsense and GetAFreelancer: while $5/day sucks by North American standards, it's good coin (for now) in Bangladesh.

AuRA (Augmented Reality Apps): These will run on iPhone, Google's mobile and a list of other smart motion-sensitive phones. The apps will hit phones and miss desktops and laptops because phones are now mobile computers. This year people will become disappointed with the performance of AuRA, much in the same way that people didn't like "server-push" in 1996 that eventual found life as Ajax and RSS. 2012 will be the year of AuRA with the London Olympics being as AuRA enabled as our world is wifi/Bluetooth enabled now.

Global Warming will become Global Adaptation: People are in a frenzy over whether America or China is the biggest polluter and contributor to Global Warming. Who cares. The main impact of pollution is to destroy eco systems we are near (our cities and buffer zones). We walk on trampled Earth. The impact of pollution on the human population is self-correcting-- too much lead in the water and the people are crippled: if the people want to live better lives they can resist the forces that are harming the streets they live in. In China, people who harvest valuable elements from electronics are poisoning themselves and their environs. At some point they will become too sick to continue and stop the practice. People who work in this environment will be prone to related illnesses. I think this year, we will "get it"-- that Global Climate Change has happened before and it's happening now; it's happening on other planets too. Our solution is not to fall for all of the greenwashing. Our solution is to adapt: move to higher ground; use the heat; close down the parka factories; buy stock in CNN because they get some awesome hurricane footage. We can shout at the wind; or we can fly a kite.

Climategate Doesn't Change The Reality

I finally found a decent overview on "Climategate." It only underlines my frustration with this situation: we are heading for climate change. It's myopic to think that we won't have minimums and maximums. Our recorded history is less than 20,000 years. The period with decent scientific data is shorter than 200 years. We're going to blow through temperature thresholds with each generation-- if the Earth is warming, we will keep breaking records.
Did industry and fat Americans in SUVs cause this change? Or, are we fleas on the dog's back? I think we are too small to make change on the scale we are talking about. Also, human-caused warming may explain the temperature on Earth-- but what about Mars? How is the temperature climbing on other planets if we're the cause?
All of this hand-wringing about climate change and reversing it doesn't serve the situation. We are part of the ecology. Flora and fauna lose their niche. Humanity's virus like quality of spreading everywhere means we're hard to supplant. We can be put under hardship; but we can also find opportunties-- just as English vineyards in the time of the Roman Empire grew grapes but turned to hardier crops as the temperatures dropped. We shouldn't be making people pile into hot buses to fix the planet-- we should look for places to grow food; or places to drop solar farms to power our air conditioners. Evolution-- natural selection-- is a combination of random traits and how they find favour with the conditions. If there is no change, evolution will creep along. We're here because of thousands of environmental crises-- from massive glaciers to slow mountain lions-- our environment shapes the path of our species.
If anything, the debate about whether global warming is human-caused is causing most of the problem. Making a linkage to the cause means that if the cause is incorrect it erodes the data that supports that climate change is happening. We shouldn't focus on the cause, but on our ability to adapt. When bears face a warmer climate, they can't buy thinner pelts-- some of them die off and some of them breed offspring who may be capable of surviving and breeding their own adapted offspring. Unlike the forces of nature where generations of adaptation bring about species survival and evolution, we can do it within a generation by making our technology evolve and make that adaptation spread to all of the people who need that benefit.

Ooh You're Blue-- The Hold Your Spine Game!

This from IO9.com:

Turns out some mysterious chemical additives may not be all bad. The sports drink and Popsicle color additive known as "brilliant blue" might have some serious benefits for people who suffer from spinal injuries, a new study reports.

In the days after a spinal cord injury, a lot is happening, and not all of it is good for the injured party. ATP (adenosine triphosphate), which usually acts as a power source for cells, floods into the injury site. But instead of helping cell recovery, ATP can unintentionally bind with important receptors on some immune cells. This can restrict oxygen flow to the cells and lead to some of the serious damage associated with spinal injuries

This colorizing chemical, also known as Blue No. 1, serves to prevent ATP from wreaking this havoc. When administered very soon after spinal injury in rats, the blue dye helped the rats recover faster and more fully. The results, which are being reported in the July 28th issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the blue dye could be used in humans for the same types of injuries.

The treatment seems to be pretty much side-effect free. Well, except for one unintended consequence: the dye treatment temporarily turns skin and eyes blue. But being blue for a few weeks is a small price to pay for spinal injury recovery. Even if it means blue skin, I'll gladly sign up for my Brawndo treatment.

Brilliant Blue For The Spine [via Science News]

(Photo: Takahiro Takano)

Dean Kamen and Water Purification

Dean Kamen wants to mass produce and distribute water purification systems. The net effect is to give 1.1 billion people clean drinking water. In short, it could cure half of the world's sick people: many of whom are dying from easily curable water borne diseases.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Dean Kamen
www.colbertnation.com
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Dateline 2011: Intelligence is Viral

I think that the most shocking discovery of our generation will be that intelligence is viral-- a bloom turns the motor-control, blood-cooling grey mass in the skull into a calculator/camcorder/philosophical super-device. I think is why animals in captivity do things that their all-natural cousins do not. I think we're infecting them with intelligence.
Don't believe me? Here's a piece on how chimpanzees that get human love and attention score better than other chimps.