Awesome Food Pairing Tool for Wine Lovers

Compliments of wine expert Natalie MacLean, check out this cool food-wine pairing tool. I also recommend the SAQ mobile app for Android, for those residing and purchasing wine in Quebec. .

The Fundamental Flaw in North American Food Safety Regulation

Here's a thought:

The moral ethical standard for our justice system whereby you are presumed innocent until proven guilty fails miserably when applied to food safety regulations, e.g. the American FDA's "generally regarded as safe" provision, or GRAS for short.

Rather, we should try to emulate the European and other foreign food and health regulators—that whatever additive, preservative, pesticide or any chemical destined for the food chain, be considered "guilty" until proven innocent; dangerous UNTIL proven safe for human consumption.

The former standard is one that can be described by statistical theory, or what one might call the avoidance of Type I Error. To illustrate using the metaphor of the justice system, an error of Type I is an error whereby a court or jury finds a defendant guilty when in fact they are innocent (i.e. rejecting the null hypothesis). One can see immediately how a Type II Error still yields a more desirable outcome, e.g. a guilty person goes free. In our civic society, our moral ethical standard essentially implies a preference to let 100 criminals walk free than to erroneously incarcerate even ONE innocent person.

Because a Type I Error would constitute an egregious miscarriage of justice, the standard is very high, i.e. a court or jury must find a defendant guilty BEYOND a reasonable doubt. Statistically, therefore, a low significance level is appropriate. The FDA's GRAS provision violates this principle. Not only does it violate the principle, it squarely places the onus of "disproving a compound's presumed safety" squarely on the shoulders of private, for-profit corporations; it is a VOLUNTARY system of disclosure. Yes, you read correctly.

Enjoy your processed foods and GMOs because, so far they're still considered safe for human consumption.

The Scam that is Modern Banking & Finance: QE, Bail-Outs and soon Bail-Ins

Oh yes, indeed, a scam. When banks dominate every aspect of capital formation, transfer and credit, it's no small wonder the over-the-counter (OTC) bubble in derivatives has gotten out of hand. Borrowing at virtually negative interest rates (which is what savvy financiers call "carry trades") is the culprit. Added to this is the wholesale subversion of treasuries worldwide by a cabal of private bankers.


The US Federal Reserve (which as you surely know is as federal as Federal Express, might I add) and the Bank of Canada are two examples. In the Canadian case, it is a central tenet of the Bank of Canada Act that the federal government and the nation retain its sovereignty over fiscal, monetary and socio-economic policy; that they invest in "human capital expenditures" and infrastructure to advance and support the base of Canadian society; that they and they alone retain the right and privilege to issue currency to the extent that it covers its needs and obligations, interest-free.


Click here to see what the Committee for Monetary and Economic Reform (COMER) is doing in Canada to reinstate these basic tenets with the central bank; suing the Bank of Canada for violating the Act's most fundamental principle. Check the COMER site for more info on what this non-profit is doing to address this challenge affecting millions of hard-working Canadians and entrepreneurs.


How did we go from here to borrowing from private bankers at interest, while they quantitatively ease at 0% providing hedge funds with the means to buy countries whole when the latter default on stealth credit that doesn't and never existed? Did you know a huge amount of all taxes we pay essentially filters to banks? Who is running the show? When you combine the typical tax burden with the financial burden of debt obligations of an "average" Canadian family, they're all working FOR the bank, by the BANK's fiat, and to the detriment of their living standards and wages, the future value of savings (if any) and the hypothecation of at least the next two or three generations.


Don't get me wrong: Banks do fulfill a meaningful purpose, such as intermediation, i.e. moving capital from sources of excess supply (savers) to interests with strong demand and inadequate capital (users, investors, venture, government). This is not an entirely bad thing. So long as the internal rate of return is positive, everyone wins and the bank earns a tidy, yet not immodest, profit. But intermediation (e.g. venture capital) only amounts to a fraction of 1% of the total business. The rest is to shore up decrepit balance sheets of central banks and their shareholders worldwide via Treasury finance (i.e. stealing from tax payers) and soon via bail-ins (stealing from depositors). All this "quantitative easing" doesn't end up in the hands of families, consumers or small businesses (which employ more than 80% of workers in North America). No. All that stimulus ends up on a bank's balance sheet, which then turns around and uses it to fuel gargantuan trading complexes. When they make money, the profits are diabolically out of this world. When they lose on those trillion-dollar bets, taxpayers (and soon depositors) will foot the bill. Have you heard of moral hazard? Ain't that the greatest game in town?