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They will be fine

I dunno about that... The articles in the Canadian media seem to suggest otherwise...?

http://www.canada.com/components/print.aspx?id=e1ddec82-8a3d-4523-8db0-088e4c2c2bdb

Whatever happened to the ultrasound regeneration thing I heard about two years ago? http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=305b49c4-e413-4bf8-a2de-4fabbc165581&k=70530 Too good to be true?

men don't have breasts.

But we're working on it!

They're not. They're growing again. All websites stating that a) glaciers are growing and b) ice caps were larger than they were last year at this time.

Of course, you'll probably just say that this is because you're driving a hybrid and it fits your convienent model of "climate change" perfectly. Climate change? It's been changing forever. Hello, "Ice Age" anyone? Trust me, there were no moto-cars back when the mammoth wandered the frozen tundra. Funny how Global Warming enthusiasts are trying to call it "climate change" now. What? You worried you might be wrong or something? Sounds like a PR stunt to cover your ass. "No, no, no. It's climate change! That includes cooling! See, it's what we're always saying!". yeah right!

Enjoy that kool-aid do you?

Still when has anyone successfully robbed a gun store?

About 10 days ago.

Such an ignorantly worded motion should have never passed in the first place. It also took quite sometime for a real apology to be forthcoming, and it was not until after the Carleton president got involved. The initial reaction by CUSA to the backlash was that students and the rest of the country just "didn't get it". Brittany Smyth, the CUSA president, kept trying to explain away the decision as having nothing to do with the clause that said CF was a white male illness. You can hear her here, on CFRA (Ottawa) radio. After a couple of days of public outrage, and a petition to have her impeached, Brittany did finally issue a somewhat mediocre apology.

The real star of this debacle is Donnie Northrup, the 4th year science student who authored the original motion. He made some interesting comments to a reporter of the Ottawa Citizen. Essentially, he regrets that we misunderstood the intent of his motion, and that he should have worded the motion more carefully. He claimed that he slipped up because he had a lot of homework due at the time. And to make himself look like a bigger ass than he's already made himself out to be, he adds that "writing is not something he's focusing his degree on."

So yeah, the decision is being revisited, but the idiots who made it are still idiots, and bringing attention to this stupidity is still worthwhile.

Where many people get tripped up from being able to believe the Bible accounts as being really God's Inspired Word is the #1 worldwide "flood of Noah's day" and the #2 6,000 years issue. I can and will explain them both although it shouldn't be necessary as Charles T. Russell already explained it in the years before and after 1900. A link to a picture I made of some excerpts from his writings are on my "Global Warming People Changed" webpage, plus the picture pops up as a "rollover image" also, same page.

Prior to the Great Flood the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface of the Earth was a great deal less. Solar rays are AGING RAYS so by being pre-Flood shielded with a "water canopy" in the thermosphere layer (a vast amount of water called in Genesis => "waters above the expanse") fell as rain, removing that reflective shield. So everything began aging incredibly much faster approximately 4,500 years ago and Flood-denying scientists assume the current Rate of Aging to be a constant. It's only a constant for the past 4,000+ years since the Great Flood.

The Earth was created "In the beginning", not 6,000 years ago. Carbon Dating is in error => 6,000 years before the Flood might look like 6 million years to today's scientific community. But what about the rocks and mountains? Didn't they take millenia to form? Well, yes and no. The Matter itself was formed "In the beginning" so it was old to begin with but aging much slower => as prior to the Flood the Earth was much smaller, the world's lands flatter and the land masses more connected. But when the water covered the entire Earth with no large mountain ranges in existence to restrain them the floodwaters sloshed around like a tanker truck without baffles, sculpting the Earth with a great unimagineable level of extreme violence, crushing the tectonic plates with its weight AND force of motion that pressed that old flat land upward into old-looking mountain ranges like the Himalayas.

The planet was crushed with water motion and force (momentum). In simpler terms, the Earth was quick-aged to look like Millenia had passed in just 40 days and 40 nights. Now you know the Truth. It has been sitting inside the Bible a very long time.

So now the noose tightens on Evolution? Yep, especially since I further clarified the subject yesterday in another fantastically-enlightening pdf doc, specifically at the very end of it, page 6 => /do_no_harm_vs_turn_the_other_cheek_cancerofthehearttissuematchpoint.pdf. By going to page 6 directly you avoid lots of stuff your sensitive doctor-back-patting ears don't want to hear. Hmm, but some of you might like pain. Hmm. In that case go to this page => http://www.newpath4.com/pdflistfor2008.htm . You will know when you find the correct link for Maximum Pain when you read there's a layer of Physics above thermodynamic laws and I've built the engines that uses it. hahaha Oh yeah, soon there will be another GREAT STUDY published saying the same thing. hahahaha They'll have the next plagiarist's special platter release issue from another country so no one will suspect they are trailing me to grab scraps I d

I think I agree with you, mostly, but I should probably say I think there's a difference between being "dumb" (not mute) and intelligence.

I'm sure there are a lot of criminals out there who score highly on IQ tests. But they do some incredibly idiotic things. Like the criminals who put hours of effort and high risk into stealing miles of copper wire off the telephone poles (although with current metal prices these kind of crimes probably will slow down).

Take these imbeciles, for example who were obviously intelligent enough to realize they could steal metal from locomotives to sell, and pulled it off, but were too dumb to realize or care that their $30 profit costs everyone -- including themselves -- who rely on the train's regular delivery of goods. They probably never even made the connection that if they cripple the trains, their local Wal-Mart won't be getting in that new shipment of XBox games for them to shove down their pants and shoplift next week.

They must be intelligent to plan these crimes and pull them off without getting caught. But they must be dumb, because for the amount of time and effort and risk they put into doing these things for less than a hundred bucks at the scrapyard, they could have got a real, legal, easier and safer job.

So the only conclusion I can make is criminals are dumb.

I could conceivably have proven you wrong, but I failed. Consider that support of your statement.

That's the funniest thing I've read all day :)

Has a road EVER gone back to being normal after getting converted to a toll road?

I don't know about roads that were converted to toll roads, but a toll recently came off a highway near where I live, ostensibly because the highway had been paid for. Of course, the upcoming election and governing party's poor performance in the polls played no role.

Sony is pulling it to avoid offending anyone who would not like phrases from the Qur'an used in association with such a game.

Certainly true, but I believe it is to prevent lost sales and not that it's the "right thing to do and that they're just as nervous of offending non-Muslims. ("Sony supports religous terrorists!") I'm certain that there would be an outcry (and most importantly to Sony - lost sales) from misguided non-Muslims as well as misguided Muslims if the song had been left in the game. They've noticed that someone's thumb is resting on the "Hot hot hot button" - any controversy that invokes mention of Islam is certain to blow farther out of proportion than something like the blind protesting "Blindness" - http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=8a0cd1fb-bc44-45a4-bc86-6a116a90f4e8. It's difficult to sell to an angry, incoherent audience but in this case it's easy to avoid the risk.

The executives at Sony are probably trying to avoid the same kind of flack that they got over the use of Manchester Cathedral in last year's "Resistance" game - which also was much furor over nothing (and in the end, un-noticed) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/manchester/6739575.stm. Getting uppity about religious symbols isn't exclusive to anybody.

"Maybe you could provide a link, since I got my numbers by actually looking at the winning margins in seats lost by Liberals."

I am not sure what you are referring to on that link you provide, since in the 15 losses listed with margins for the liberals, the biggest margin was 2.7%. With the greens pulling 7%, it is easy to see that they cost many seats. Vote splitting a well known phenomena. I am not going to argue the number of seats the Greens cost. It clearly elected many extra conservatives with vote splitting. The 19 number I referenced came from this news story:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=832e5b09-2500-4976-8732-698310091024
"The Green party again cleaved votes away from the NDP and Liberals and were on pace to take away enough votes to help elect Conservatives in 19 ridings."

Whether the actual number is 12 or 20 is not the issue. The Greens are a seat-less party that draws only one result from their votes: Electing more Conservatives.

"Only if literally millions of voters sat down together and tediously worked out where it would be best to send their votes. Who's being the naive idealist again?"

You don't need to actually work together with anyone to vote strategically, you just need some information about the relative position of candidates in your riding. Such resource was a available and I used it and I didn't have to "sit down with millions of voters". Obviously strategic voting isn't for everyone, but if more progressive voters did it, progressive parties would hold more sway in the house of commons.

One strategic voting resource:
http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/

Perhaps though that's why i like Palin's bio as a cleaner of Alaska's Republican Augean stables and am frustrated by the one-sided coverage of her.

That's your problem. You have this image of her as a corruption fighter, which couldn't be farther from the truth. Like I said, she's just like Gingrich - she didn't take on corrupt figures because she wanted to clean out the system, but because she's a ladder climber who was looking to make a name for herself:

• She takes Bush's peonage appointments and turns it up to 11.
• She tried to ban books and tried to fire the Wasilla librarian when she rebuffed Palin's request for the third time.
• She fires officials that don't support her during elections.
• She requested earmarks that McCain specifically complained about as being wasteful spending.
• She fully supported the bridge to nowhere until Congress said it would have to be paid for with state money, yet took the federal funds anyway. Now she's lying by saying "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks,' on that bridge to nowhere."
• She illegally uses personal email accounts for state business.
• Abused her position by trying to have her ex-brother in law fired, and when the state commissioner refused, she fired him instead.
• And most dispicably, signed off on charging rape victims for examination kits.

I am SAYING that these are facts, and that reporting them is (of course) fair. My complaint is the failure to report other pertinent facts.

Like those Fox News talking heads that wished that the rest of the media would stop talking about all the bad things happening in Iraq - like bombings that would kill a hundred people at a time, roadside bombs killing our troops, and ethnic cleansing between Shiites and Sunnis - and focus on the positive things like construction of a new clinic inside the Green Zone. I'm sure the women of Iraq who would wear mourning robes for years at a time - another family member would be killed before it was time to take them off - would concur.

With all due respect there's a pretty big difference between being endorsed by a pastor and having someone BE your pastor for over 20 years.

With all due respect you're rationalizing a racist smear. If you watch more than "Goddamn America" soundbyte played on the media, he's speaking about how the United States kept slaves "in perpetuity", the "separate but equal" Dred Scott decision, Jim Crow, forced American Indians onto reservations, interned Japanese Americans during WWII, and the Tuskegee experiments on black men with syphilis. Funny how the media never mentioned that this Angry Black Man hated the United States sooo much he voluntarily gave up his student deferment and served two terms of duty as a Marine in Vietnam, and then re-enlisted as a medical corpsman and was so good he was the valedictorian of his class and was on LBJ's surgical team in 1966.

It is at least conceivable that McCain wasn't fully aware of

I don't really know enough of the NDP or the other parties to form a worthwhile opinion. I only got here a month ago and I'm still trying to make sense of the factions and what they represent. I know more than the average American about the British parliamentary system, and that has helped a little with my comprehension of it all, but I'm still pretty clueless. If I wasn't already so burned out on politics from the last year in the US, I might be a more informed spectator.

Plus, it doesn't help that most of the newspapers I read have conflicting accounts of who is doing well. I've seen a lot of "A vote for Jack Layton is a vote for Stephen Harper" business, so I get the impression that the liberals and the NDP are wasting their efforts fighting over the same demographic. At the same time, I'm seeing all of these dire reports predicting that the Conservatives are due likely to suffer a defeat on the 14th.

I did get a kick out of this article, though. I'm completely pro-drug but if anyone in the US accused a politician of committing genocide on drug users because he refused to continue funding a supervised injection site, the accuser would be laughed out of town and I'd be there laughing at him.

Where are you getting these figures? They're not exactly correct.

http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs/
This isn't Chevy's official site, and it might be out of date. Chevy's official site (I believe) use to have the 50 MPG claim, but it isn't there anymore. That might be because they are trying to get some type of combined electric/gas equivalent MPG rating of 100 MPG from the EPA:
http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/cars/story.html?id=6a8c4641-3318-4b0c-813d-951db9742907
I don't know if there is a more current estimate for pure gasoline MPG.

Where are you getting your 30 MPG from? And please clarify your 10 reasons for this idea as being 'laughable'

No, record low amounts of Arctic ice are due to volcanic activity and a lot of human activity in the north.

Ohai, iz eruptinz ur ice:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=81bb2fd3-63f1-476f-b0be-f48c0dc90304

(Please do not show "relatif" charts (like, temps in relation to 40s-70s as people often do) because it's not getting you anything. And of course it's going to get fucking warmer compared to the last few thousand years. We're recovering from an ice age...)

I find it odd that the IPCC fails to mention that increased underwater volcanic activity under the arctic has been occurring since at least 1999, including a pyroclastic eruption and one that supposedly was as large as Pompei

It's not odd; the heat generated by undersea volcanoes is negligible compared to the heat necessary to melt that quantity of ice. This is noted in other press releases. It would actually make a nice physics "Fermi problem" for students to estimate, back of envelope, the amount of ice that could be melted this way.

or would it be better to go ahead and destroy (or at least tax to ruin) western civilization as a precautionary measure?

... and here we descend from a seemingly honest question into insane political hyperbole.

Clue: "Carbon taxes will destroy the economy" is the conservative scare story version of "global warming will make the human race go extinct". Both are ill informed. You might start by reading A Question of Balance, the new book on climate economics by who is arguably the world's leading climate economist, Bill Nordhaus of Yale.

Note also that the evidence in favor of global warming is based on far more than Arctic ice melt rates.

> You do know that the depths of the ocean tend to be very cold, right?

Normally..... unless there is volcanic activity in the region like is currently going on around the north pole.

Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes:canada.com

"Currently"? You guys are grasping for every straw, aren't you? Must be the water rising.

> You do know that the depths of the ocean tend to be very cold, right?

Normally..... unless there is volcanic activity in the region like is currently going on around the north pole.

Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes:canada.com

But oh no, it just has to be global warming. It get shot somewhere: Global Warming! Record cold? That's Global Climate Change for ya. Floods? Drought? Plague of Locusts? Manmade Global Warming every time and the ONLY solution is the destruction of Western Civilization, replacing the values of the Enlightenment with Socialism and Planning.

Actually Canada is trying to get closer to Europe, at least economically to the 27 nations that officially use the Euro:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=1247770e-d31e-4452-9713-364320dfd049
It would certainly be interesting if some day Canada starts using Euros :-D

Here you go

According to this article it isn't contributing to the melting, but is producing high quantities of CO2

Did you ever wonder why the interest in it spiked even with proof we haven't warmed in years but actually may have cooled?

In that case, I wonder why the Arctic ice is still melting. Could it be that your statistic is part of the 43.7% that are made up on the spot?

Didn't you hear?, everything is linked to cancer or at least if you listen to the news thats what it seems like.

There was a very interesting editorial piece in my local newspaper today on pretty much this topic that deserves to be read by anyone working in health / safety / threat / etc. research.

The short point is that when every preliminary study, or even hypothesis, is presented by the news media in the same fashion as something that has stood up to rigourous testing (e.g., smoking causes cancer), people begin to filter out everything.

That being said, my short summary doesn't do the editorial piece justice.

Recently on slashdot (July 22, 2008):

Scientists Solve Riddle of Toxic Algae Blooms http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/07/22/1546259

Link to TFA http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=381d4ce5-89a2-4901-864e-34239419bf67

In a famous 1974 aerial photograph published by the journal Science, two portions of their experimental Lake 226 were highlighted. One side was treated with carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous. The other was treated with just carbon and nitrogen.

The side receiving phosphorous rapidly developed a huge bloom of blue-green algae. The side not receiving phosphorous remained in near-pristine condition.

The recent conclusion of a 37 year experiment is it's phosphorus not nitrogen that's the problem:

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=381d4ce5-89a2-4901-864e-34239419bf67

Schindler's latest series of long-term experiments shows that nitrogen removal completely fails to control blue-green algae blooms. He proved this by manipulating nitrogen and phosphorus levels on Lake 227 for 37 years. Nitrogen control, he found, only encouraged algae blooms.

That's what I was looking for... Thanx!

The recent conclusion of a 37 year experiment is it's phosphorus not nitrogen that's the problem:

http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=381d4ce5-89a2-4901-864e-34239419bf67

Schindler's latest series of long-term experiments shows that nitrogen removal completely fails to control blue-green algae blooms. He proved this by manipulating nitrogen and phosphorus levels on Lake 227 for 37 years. Nitrogen control, he found, only encouraged algae blooms.

90% of traffic lights are not internet linked - they are dumb mechanical timers - kinda hard to cyber that

I imagine the other 10% would be more than sufficient, particularly if it happened at about 4:00pm.

Overload the transformers - way easier said than done, but when that usually happens, a breaker pops, you lose a substation - OK, they find the short, away we go

That's why this step comes after causing multiple simultaneous traffic accidents. Google found this; it sounds like you're being overly optimistic about the state of electrical infrastructure in a lot of places.

If you're going to do "Conservative math" and divide quarterly profit by annual revenue, you're going to come up with whatever numbers you want, like inany Republican economic analysis.

If you leave out a $290M Exxon-Valdez settlement (pennies on the dollar owed, and a onetime charge on decades of legal operations), Exxon actually profited $11.97 BILLION. Annualize that number, and you get $47.88 BILLION profit. Of about $404.55 BILLION 2007 revenue, that would be about 11.8% profit. On such a huge, global operation, with retail prices hitting all kinds of ceilings (like people forced to decide to skip food, healthcare or gas/heat), that is a fabulous profit rate on a fabulous amount of revenue. More than 5% profit on such huge revenues would still be fabulous. Especially when the rest of the US economy, that these giant revenue extractions are strangling, is shrinking and failing.

Now, if you want to go for Conservative economics gold, just suggest something irrelevant like "Wal-Mart is #2". Congratulations!

A group of airline employees insist they are in earnest, and they are upset that neither their bosses nor the government will take them seriously.

A flying saucerlike object hovered low over O'Hare International Airport for several minutes before bolting through thick clouds with such intense energy that it left an eerie hole in overcast skies, said some United Airlines employees who observed the phenomenon.

A Paul Hellyer, former Canadian defence minister says be believes advanced technology from extraterrestrial civilizations offers the best hope to "save our planet" from the perils of climate change.

Here is a link to a story about convicted terrorist Inderjit Singh Reyat who will have to raise $500,000 to get bail in Canada http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=04aa2643-7845-40e6-8f59-e283bae49176

Much much lower than the 5million this tech guy will have to produce.

The lawyers are stirring the pot. Nothing else to see, move along. These are not the lawsuits you are looking for.

These are real issues. The government bureaucrats' union in Canada is negotiating on that point.

not to be in the US.

Oh, please. Australia banning Fallout 3, Canadian judge overruling a parent's normal punishment, and Britain is officially insane.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/11/america/hate.php
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=6aaf855a-47e3-4e3f-8709-5b53dcfffff0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nbaby.xml
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?xml=/global/2008/06/25/noindex/nchild.xml

I'll stick with the imperfect USA.

Canada, being so close to the US, still appears to have a little sense:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080628/steyn_commission_080628/20080628?hub=TopStories

I believe Polaris has style-learning abilities as well.

"Polaris's second ability is learning. The program studies how opponents are playing and makes adjustments to its style in response. At last year's event in Vancouver, the machine played the first two matches purely on its memory, earning a draw and a victory. For the third and fourth matches, the scientists activated its learning mechanism, programming Polaris based on what they had seen from opponents Phil Laak and Ali Eslami."

http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=714f37e4-c680-4863-8db1-a772c53e8dd9

If Colin Powell were so audacious as to actually make his position known on a politically hot subject he would suddenly see his popularity plummet.

Like his complete criticism of Bush's invasion of Iraq, Guantanamo, support of Obama, etc...

Maybe...and I know I'm going out on a limb here..it's possible that this has a little something to do with it...?

Ferretman

But sewage treatment plants are good things! They should name a raw sewage outfall pipe after him. Or a newly discovered disease.

I moved from the UK to Vancouver a few years ago so my experiences might be a bit dated. I had the same response from the recruiters as you though - they will not treat you seriously unless you are resident.

It depends on the job market at the time as to how you'll fare, Vancouver is quite a small town as far as IT goes, so be prepared not to work for some time :) - I figured on about 12 months - but you won't care as you'll probably be hitting the slopes quite a bit. Be persistent, hawk your resume around town to the major recruiters - fill in their questionnaires and put yourself around as much as possible to get your face known. Believe it or not, Vancouver can be a quite a conservative place for the job market - they don't like strangers, so get in there and network, network, network.

Check out the local classifieds nearer the time, although there isn't usually much in there, but there might be. Also, check out Usenet - bc.jobs - to get a feel for what's active, you should probably be doing that now to get a feel for what is happening.

Be prepared to move around quite a bit - if you can work freelance, start up your own company which is quite easy to do and I would say is by far the best way to network and get known. It also means that you don't pass up on contract work. A relative doing the same as you worked for 3 companies in the first couple of years (as a "permie") so employment can be volatile - plan on it being this way. You can be "let go" easily in the first 6 months or so, so don't treat everything as a job for life. I did some work in Calgary for a while - this is a good way to see other cities but watch out for having to pay for accommodation twice. It helps to have relatives over here.

G'luck sport! See you around town :)

This was actually developed by Carlos Lange from the University of Alberta. It was constructed in Denmark at the University of Aarhus. And of course the project is run from the University of Arizona.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=5de7e220-b9d3-4540-8c02-f9369339c52c
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=25509
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/article.cfm?id=9360
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/620268/The-Telltale-Wind-Experiment-for-the-NASA-Phoenix-Mars-Lander-2008

One thing for certain.. it's definitely a U of A project.

Have to wait till Tuesday now. http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/story.html?id=5678fe22-2a63-4e63-ba83-cd33e903c7dc

Correct, wish I didn't have to work so I could go watch it. http://www.canada.com/saskatoonstarphoenix/story.html?id=9374aca1-d564-4b20-a254-8bd79d50bb76

It's not just heart disease, cancer and many other physical ailments: Obesity tied to risk of psychiatric disorders

"The Man" tricked us into watching "Torchwood" by claiming it was a "Doctor Who" spin-off. I suspect the BBC is short of toaster ovens since the tragic loss of Talkie Toaster.

While I agree that this "hate speech tribunal" sounds pretty ridiculous -- past experience tell me this thread will turn into a Muslim-bashing thread.

So, let's hear those bashers give equal time to little gem, also comes from Canada: (Prime Minister Harper, in fact:)

Criticism of Israel is Anti-Semitic

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission will begin deliberations tomorrow to determine if Bell's "bandwidth throttling" should stop immediately until government policy is set.

Forget that this is precious high technology that can, and has had spin-offs in the past.
Forget that Canada produced the world's first digital telecommunications satellite. Forget all the jobs and knowledge that will gradually melt south of the border. forget it.

It's much more basic than that. There is a long-time border dispute with the americans, we think the waters between arctic islands are Canadian waters, the US claims they aren't. The Americans have nuclear submarines, we don't. Now with the ice melting, http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=8df15e06-e40d-42da-b42e-61c0d0713260

there is a navigable channel shaping up that could take weeks off the time to ship from asia to europe. and there's oil up there, http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2006/01/arctic-circle-canadas-not-kidding.html
too.

One of the main uses of RADARSAT for Canada is to replace aerial reconnaissance for Ice forecasting. they can, I imagine, spot submarines as well, since the Americans, supposedly our closest ally, refused to launch them. So they were launched on Russian vehicles.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071025164751AAOF6Ur

http://www.studentsonice.com/blog/?p=79

We like our arctic, it is ours. We'd like the tax revenue from any oil that is pumped out of there. we'd like the revenue from a major shipping lane, so declaring it international waters is a problem for us. We can't afford to build nuclear submarines...

So it would be pretty @#%$@^%@ stupid to sell this company to a US arms manufacturer, which is, at the very least, clearly beholden to the US government for contracting.

(note: I think they eventually didn't actually take them down, but you get the idea.)

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/story.html?id=7534c4de-0c21-4653-a06b-112bc96b2708&k=6345

And it looks like some ppl may have a way to get at it now.

400 billion barrels to be exact.

http://www.deepwater.com/fw/main/Discoverer_Enterprise-141.html

Yeah, I work up by gastown, luckily a couple blocks northeast, so it's not too bad. But, there are still a handful of regular homeless people who come into the office building asking for change... one of them has been out there regularly for the last almost 3 years I've worked here, for example.

My band has played a lot of shows in the downtown area, including shows just a block from good ol' Main & Hastings (where, when driving, you almost literally are dodging drugged out zombies that are stumbling across the street). So I've met a lot of whacked out people, witnessed crimes taking place across the street, and of course almost everyone I know has had their car windows smashed (or their entire car stolen). I don't feel bad anymore though, like I did when I was a kid. I more feel pissed off about it. It's hard to feel bad when I feel like "they are fucking up my city".

But, here's what it boils down to. Vancouver is the only big city in BC, or even western Canada. The only place where there's a huge supply of drugs, and there's somewhat of a public transit system, so people can get around. The next big city is an 11+ hour drive away. For homeless people here, there is nowhere else to go. They can't cross the border down to the US (legally) because they don't have ID, or even worse probably have criminal records and aren't interested in the trouble that's going to bring up. There's also an ever-increasing influx of organized crime (enough that the VPD have formed a new anti-gang task force as of a year ago), all of which is almost entirely linked with a pretty lucrative drug trade.

Eh, idunno, pretty depressing. I've watched my neighbourhood turn from a nice quiet spacious foresty area into an overcrowded place loaded with duplexes and townhouses and violent attacks by gang members, in a matter of 10 years. A group of six guys got murdered in my town last year, most of whom went to the same high school as me. What the hell.

This is a few minutes away from where I live: A driver got a ticket for driving too fast to the hospital. He was taking his buddy who was accidentally hit by a co-worker's powerful nail gun.

Now if this cop only had discretion enough to waive the ticket.