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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Goderich Signal-Star, 2009-01-07, Page 9Goderich Signal -Star, Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Page 7 Conveyors to move commodities could To the Editor: Letters built in modules by a new business formed The New Year has arrived and with it . by professional trades from the now defunct many challenges for the town of Goderich. opinion Volvo manufacturing, and built in the plant. The process of us belted conveyors for and then follow the grade of the rail tracks running on the river side of the tracks, to the This would prevent the turning off of ser - moving commodities is not rocket science. vices to the plant. Conveyors are used worldwide, below de, Mill Road storage facility. The.system can be built with local exper- above grade up, up slope, down slope over • The conveyor system would be covered, tise with some outside help. The state -of -the - and under and for many miles if needed. nun silent with a short spur conveyor to the p Evaporator Plant. art storage and truck loading would be built r propose a world class conveyor system on Sifto land, by local trades, along with a short truck route to Hwy. 8. The new load - out facility would also handle rail -hopper cars. With the mine building a state-of-the-art automated storage and loading facility for the marine trade, now is the time to "hook in:,• This project would eliminate most of the to move salt, from our world-class Goderich Salt Mine to a storage and truck -loading facility that could be built on Sifto land on the West side of Mill Road. This conveyor system would run beside the existing rail- road tracks from the mine easterly to the storage facility. It would be elevated for vehicle and train traffic in the harbour area Parliament 'de To the Editor: With reference to your paragraph in a let- ter sent to me from Huron -Bruce MP Ben Lobb, December 10, 2008: j ("For more than 140 years, one political party has almost never•received 50 per cent c of the popular vote (this has happened only Nike by Conservatives in 1958 and 1984). Despite this fact,: our parliamentary system has produced stable and legitimate govern- ments. In my view, this>is not a weakness of our systema It is an enviable record ofbalanc- ing three principles necessary for any suc- c cessful electoral system democracy, legiti- macy and stability.") I was heartened to hear leading journalists w This conveyor system would eliminate most of the truck traffic on North Harbour Road, save for the dedicated service vehicles, and would eliminate most of the safety issues associated with the most dangerous intersection in Goderich, i.e. Highway 21 and North Harbour Road. The engineering would be done by a local engineering _firm. •The stricture would be be next step truck traffic on North Harbour Road, enhance the safety aspect of the Hwy. 21 intersection, employ our own professional labour force at all levels, help keep the manufacturing plant open and provide work for ancillary busi- ness. The funding would come from Federal, Provincial and local governments and town council would give this project No. 1 priority right now. The question arises, in my mind: Are we and our elected officials truly dedi- cated to keeping .the town going? If so this is a project that will benefit all, right now and in the future. Sin K. John Hazli Goderich .aceshows its timepolitics orto . rove up in a year-end review session on CBC, hosted tion reflected the wishes of the people in a Surely there is room for conciliatory Com- by Peter Mansbridge, including the editor of multi-party system. promise in our political decision-making in Maclean magazine and other respected We are a multi-party system. We are no 2009 and beyond. The philosophy of "your ournalists suggest how out of sync the longer a two-party democracy. That system way" or "my. way" leads to conflict and dis- Canadian parliamentary system was with the will never return. . cord and wastes millions of dollars of money unrent reality of diversity in Canadian soci- Far better that we seek a more mature and that would be better spent on addressing glar- ety. For generations both Liberals and responsible system. Your call for "democra- ing shortfalls in matters like child poverty or Conservatives have fought for a pluralistic • cy, legitimacy and stability" would be better environmental disregard. Witness the deba- society which has built a tangled web of served by restructuring our parliamentary cle of the last two months in the Canadian multiple interests io our country. system to a contemporary arrangement that Parliament. These distinguished and informed : reflects the reality of Canadian political Surely it is time for Canadian politics to Canadians suggested that the one immediate structures in the 21st century. In a system that grow up. hange needed in our Canadian parliamen- gives a separatist party 49 seats with 10 per tary system was a shift to some form of pro- cent of the vote and the Green Party zero portional representation. Our democracy representation with 7 per cent, there is some- ould be better served if elected representa- thing drastically wrong. (I voted for neither.) • Paul Carroll Goderich Older people have poor.. .whatchamacallit er peop e. oor memory. Could there in my daytimer for that person, then be a connection? on the second or third ring I become I hope you're sitting down for this news mildly. distracted by something or flash. A recent scientific study at the Rotman more than likely hopelessly lost in a Research Institute in Toronto has come to vacuum of vapid thought and when a the conclusion that old people are forget- voice at the other end of the line an - fol. Yeah, I know, it's the kind of startling swers, I might as well be on Jeopardy discovery that normally comes from the listening to an audible voice clue, Hubble Space Telescope or Einstein's long slamming my hand on the button lost laboratory log. There it was in black and and blurting out "Who is Ethel Mer All the white and published in the Journal of Neu- mangy" A Cr roscience -- old people cannot .... "Hello," mystery y ry guest. Sony, where was I? That thing about how "Hi!" I say. people who are .... Note: we are presently "Who is this?" experiencing technical difficulties. Please "Bill." do not adjust your newspaper. Return to the "Bill who?" first paragraph of this column. "Bill Thomas." Other conclusions these scientists 'Well, who were you calling?" came to: "Uh, um, well .... " Hazel McCallion will not be a late -season Click. Thank goodness. Saved again by call-up by the Toronto Maple Leafs. a wrong number. Fortunately, I was unable Mickey Rooney will not play the role as to retain the correct sequence of numbers in the '12 -year-old stableboy in the third and the time it takes to close a book and pick up unnecessary remake of The Black Stallion. a phone. Tomoji Tanabe, the world's oldest man So when I read that scientists have studied will not be featured on Dancing With The the brains of young people and old people Stars although Claris Leachman did pretty and discovered the older ones aren't so hot well. at remembering things, I am not exactly ren - For the last couple of years now I've been dered speechless. As a matter of fact, playing a little game with myself called: if I thought 1 could actually make the "Quick! Identify the voice." What happens connection from Bell Directory Assis- is I make a conscious decision to telephone tance to notepad to touchtone dial — I'd somebody and dial the number 1 have listed phone these people and tell them ex- • • 'Xbrld's actly what I think of their study! Apparently, older brains are less able to filter irrelevant information out of their immediate environment, making it difficult for older adults to focus on the task at hand. This was the conclusion of the study's author, Dale Sievers who left the report on the seat of a Yonge Street subway after he was unable to locate his car keys on •the morning of the press conference which didn't matter any- way because he had circled the wrong day on his appointment calendar. The Rotman Research team used a func- tional magnetic resonance imaging machine to scan the brains of 12 young adults and 12 older adults as they tried to recognize pictures of faces they had been shown. The younger brains scored better in the test be- cause the adults; averaging 70 years of age could not suppress or filter out the distrac- tion of the MRI machine which —.and here's the best part — "... makes loud, repeated knocking noises." Well just maybe it's not our brains that are defective. Maybe you Rotman Re- search scholars should GET A BETTER FREAKIN' MRI MACHINE! Okay? Put me in the booth at a police line-up with the loud, knocking noises of a new car made by General Motors banging on my brain cells and I'm likely to finger the uni- formed cop on the end as the guy who stole my wallet. Of course those youngsters are. going to ace a test marred by stress -- they function all their waking hours with iPods in their ears. They can flip through fifty TV channels while playing video games with their feet. Has anybody been to a sports bar lately? There's 38 television sets showing 38 dif- ferent sporting events, the sound is shut off, rock music is blaring and young people are engaged in casual conversations with other young people who are talking on cell phones. The TV monitors run captions for the "fractionally unfocused." Seniors, on the other hand try to focus on one thing at a time in a calm and quiet atmo- sphere that's conducive to thought and con- templation. We will look long and hard at a photograph of say Bette Davis, slowly zero- ing in on identifying her by name by remem- bering her roles in All About Eve, Whatever Happened to Baby lane? and Jezebel. Then some Rotman Research scientist with an itchy finger on a stopwatch will say: "Right. Time's up," and we will collectively shout: "Bob Barker." Don't waste money on studies that tell us we're old and therefore forgetful. Invent a pill I can take to remind me where I parked my car at the mall. By the way, whatever did happen to Baby Jane?