After reading this week’s editorial, do you want to know more about self-driving cars?
They are already on the road of course, with products from Tesla and General Motors. Of course, Tesla is all-electric. And the company doesn’t have a pick-up. But guess what, The General has gas, and a pick-up, and one of the biggest self-driving platforms around.
GM’s product is called Cruise. The other big name, besides Tesla, in driverless or self-driving, is called Waymo. Waymo is actually a subsidiary of Alphabed, the parent company of Google.
If you are already interested in self-driving vehicles, you might know the California Public Utilities Commission voted Aug. 10 last month to allow both Waymo and Cruise to start charging customers using driverless taxis around San Francisco.
There is a good story at https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/are-self-driving-cars-already-safer-than-human-drivers/
The author is already leaning to say “Yes” but also says, there is not good data on the safety of human drivers. Which is kind of typical of most issues these days. Politicians are more of the “If it saves one life, I am all for it” mentality. Meaning of course, I love passing new rules and regulations as long as I personally, or most of my voters, don’t have to pay for it. Because it looks so good that I might actually be doing something.
Check out the story. If you are internet challenged, have your neighbour print you a hard copy.
And if you feel like spending some of your hard-earned coined, get ready to order your own, brand new, ‘chauffered’ vehicle. Just the item to impress the folks at the coffee shop, quilt club, or seniors lodge. Heck, even Grade 4 or 5.
Among the ideas for fighting climate change, for those who are always ready to join the latest cause, is planting trees, and growing algae.
Both ideas are around for many years. The thinking is, plants breathe carbon dioxide just like animals breathe oxygen. So more plants means more C02 is taken out of the air. Which means this is supposed to slow down, halt, or even reverse global warming.
While we love having four seasons, enjoy winter sports, we don’t really care for those +40C sunny days some places have. In fact, anything past +30C is just as bad as anything below -30C as far as we are concerned.
Anyways, growing trees seems to be a bit of a problem in some parts of the world where forests have been shredded to plant crops. So the next idea is to grow algae.
Algae is that green stuff that plugs up many lakes. The plan here is to grow huge fields of algae on lakes, seas and oceans. The algae would be harvested just like a crop, processed, and turned into some kind of breakfast cereal, protein shake, or chewy granola bar. Whatever! Maybe even fake beef or chicken!
As usual, the people supporting this idea don’t live near recreation lakes, or have it all figured out how the ocean area supporting a field of algae will be nowhere near their own part of water.
On the topic of algae, there was a short warning a few weeks ago of a “bloom” around Slave Lake at the east end of Lesser Slave Lake.
Now that cooler September weather is here, threats of a major outbreak of the toxic “blue green” stuff that causes skin rashes as it floats to the surface and rots are fading away.
Although algae blooms used to be very common around mid to late-August, if not even earlier, in most Alberta lakes, the past several years have seen fewer and fewer bad outbreaks. This, even in face of climate change, which is supposed to be making our lakes warmer, and thus actually encourages the algae plant growth.
So, what has changed?
If you are Metis, and of voting age, we hope you are making plans, or have already voted, in the first ever Otipemisiwak Metis Government election.
Ads have been running in this newspaper to get your attention. Full details on the voting, which runs from Sept 13 to the 19, can be found online at www.MetisElectionsAB.com/GeneralElection
If you need help, head to the same place.
Candidates running were written up in last week’s edition of this newspaper. If you missed that, you can find the stories online at southpeacenews.com
“You need that gal as a boss as much as a tomcat needs a marriage license.” – Grandma Smithers
“Trust me. There are plenty of adults who can’t count to 10. I should know because I’m always stuck behind them in the grocery express lane.” – Grandpa Jonesy