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Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??

This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.

Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??

This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.

Canadian Suicide Car Bombers??

This Canadian suicide bomber killed fellow Canadians in Afghanistan. These Canadian Al Qaeda supporters, who had world-wide connections, were preparing to start attacking various targets in Canada, and were trying to obtain enough explosives for a large truck bomb. Al Qaeda has warned Canada that it is subject to attack (due at least in part to the fact that Canadians as a whole don't follow extreme Islam). If Britain can have suicide bombers attack inside the country, I doubt that there is any reason Canada couldn't. A suicide bicycle bomber killed four Candian soldiers in September, and a suicide car bomber killed two Canadian soldiers last week. Canadians are already being killed by suicide terrorists, at least one of which was Canadian, and there are more like minded people already operating in Canada, partially due to extremists exploiting holes in Canada's immigration policy. Hopefully, when the Canadian security services break up terror cells in the future, they won't just deport them, but will send them to prison. Canada is a great nation facing some difficult choices and tasks.

What also got to me while trying to get through downtown is how the embassy is allowed to eat up a lane of traffic for their precious concrete walls, as if there was ever a real danger in Canada.

Real danger? You mean like these fine Canadian Al Qaeda supporters? I doubt they will be the only ones to pop up given Al Qaeda's recent warnings and references to Canada. Al Qaeda underestimates Canada ... assuming the Canadian people are committed to arms and action. The Germans of yesteryear would not make that mistake.

The parent is right. Much of the push for "regulating" the internet in Canada (where I live) comes from those who want to shut down "hate speech." This includes a former political staffer and lobbyist Warren Kinsella, whose has actually written books about white supremacists, debated them etc.

You might think then that with supporters like Kinsella, this is a noble crusade. Yet, this is Kinsella's argument for regulating the internet:

With the Internet awash in child pornography and hate propaganda - with the Internet facilitating the daily doings of stalkers, perverts, and the likes of al-Qaeda - this writer and other naïve liberals had clung to the primitive notion that the CRTC (which has the mandate to regulate Canadian telecommunications services) would have regulated, um, the Internet (a telecommunications service found here and there in Canada).

For the record, I support Canada's hate laws. But when the good guys start stooping to mischaraterizations, hysteria and flat-out lies -- the revolution's gone too far.

I'd have to agree that it may be premature to judge the issue closed. Clearly, the scientific debate has only ended for some people. For others http://www.lexpress.fr/idees/tribunes/dossier/alle gre/dossier.asp?ida=451670 (see http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264835 for the English translation), and http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/s tory.html?id=3711460e-bd5a-475d-a6be-4db87559d605 it hasn't.

Of course, pointing out that evidence either for or against catastrophic, human-induced warming is not as conclusive as many would have us believe is not at all a popular position, and tends to draw heated and irrational responses such as ad-hominem attacks. Which, as most fans of intelligent, rational debate will recognize, usually serve as evidence of a weak argument.

As a side issue (and I mean this sincerely, and not as a troll), can anyone explain how climate models can predict global temperatures to within a degree or two years from now, but manifestly can't accurately predict tomorrow's temperature?

The popular belief here is that all climiate scientists agree with Gore's conclusions about Global Warming. It would seem that is not the case. From this article.

"I can assure Mr. Gore that no one from the South Pacific islands has fled to New Zealand because of rising seas. In fact, if Gore consults the data, he will see it shows sea level falling in some parts of the Pacific." -- Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, University of Auckland, N.Z.
- - -
"We find no alarming sea level rise going on, in the Maldives, Tovalu, Venice, the Persian Gulf and even satellite altimetry, if applied properly." -- Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics and geodynamics, Stockholm University, Sweden.
- - -
"Gore is completely wrong here -- malaria has been documented at an altitude of 2,500 metres -- Nairobi and Harare are at altitudes of about 1,500 metres. The new altitudes of malaria are lower than those recorded 100 years ago. None of the "30 so-called new diseases" Gore references are attributable to global warming, none." -- Dr. Paul Reiter, professor, Institut Pasteur, unit of insects and infectious diseases, Paris, comments on Gore's belief that Nairobi and Harare were founded just above the mosquito line to avoid malaria and how the mosquitoes are now moving to higher altitudes.
- - -
"Our information is that seven of 13 populations of polar bears in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (more than half the world's estimated total) are either stable or increasing..... Of the three that appear to be declining, only one has been shown to be affected by climate change. No one can say with certainty that climate change has not affected these other populations, but it is also true that we have no information to suggest that it has." -- Dr. Mitchell Taylor, manager, wildlife research section, Department of Environment, Igloolik, Nunavut.
- - -
"Mr. Gore suggests that the Greenland melt area increased considerably between 1992 and 2005. But 1992 was exceptionally cold in Greenland and the melt area of ice sheet was exceptionally low due to the cooling caused by volcanic dust emitted from Mt. Pinatubo. If, instead of 1992, Gore had chosen for comparison the year 1991, one in which the melt area was 1% higher than in 2005, he would have to conclude that the ice sheet melt area is shrinking and that perhaps a new Ice Age is just around the corner." -- Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax.
- - -
"The oceans are now heading into one of their periodic phases of cooling.... Modest changes in temperature are not about to wipe them [coral] out. Neither will increased carbon dioxide, which is a fundamental chemical building block that allows coral reefs to exist at all." -- Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.
- - -
"Both the Antarctic and Greenland ice caps are thickening. The temperature at the South Pole has declined by more than one degree C since 1950. And the area of sea ice around the continent has increased over the last 20 years." -- Dr. R.M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia.
- - -
"From data published by the Canadian Ice Service, there has been no precipitous drop-off in the amount or thickness of the ice cap since 1970 when reliable overall coverage became available for the Canadian Arctic." -- Dr./Cdr. M.R. Morgan, FRMS, formerly advisor to the World Meteorological Organization/climatology research scientist at University of Exeter, U.K.
- - -
"The MPB (mountain pine beetle) is a species native to this part of North America and is always present. The MPB epidemic started as comparatively small outbreaks and through forest management inaction got completely out of hand." -- Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C., comments on Gore's belief that the mountain pine beetle is an "invasive exotic species" that has become a plague due to fewer days of frost.

It didn't help matters that Ballmer himself talked about "squirting" music and photos to other Zunes, which, along with the brown colour most commonly associated with the Zune, was easily a gross insinuation right from the horse's mouth.

Zune, incidentally, is phonetically identical to a euphemism French Quebec parents might use with their kids to refers to their penis or vagina (reference).

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=a f642b87-7d79-48ad-a55e-f687c1aad687&k=7039

The Canadian PM likes to nag china about human rights.
So China took one away to prove Canada's point.

• Machines misread ballots.
  
• A backup plan covering all possible problems was missing.
  
• The lack of paper ballots in some municipalities prevented judicial recounts.
  
• Only partial testing of the voting machines took place in some instances.
  

Zune (zoune) also a slang term for penis in Quebec french.
http://www.canada.com/topics/finance/story.html?id =0013a614-239a-4210-89f5-7993f86d64fd&k=40444

[fair use]
But he added: ``All of Quebec has been giggling for the last couple of days at the thought of Mr. Gates swearing that there was an 80 per cent chance that he'd whip out his little zoune before the holiday season ...''
[/fair use]

GameTap just opened in Canada, and according to this article:
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/business/s tory.html?id=100f2948-199b-41a5-ae4a-3adcc724e6b4 ... is coming to UK, Australia, and NZ in early 2007. More countries will follow.

They are expanding, you just need a little patience. It's a tricky business when you consider that some of the games GameTap offers could have different licenses domestically in the US and internationally, and GameTap has to ensure that they've got the appropriate licenses before they can offer the content.

Yay, my amateur ramblings were backed up by nuclear engineers!

The seismic people have enough experience looking at explosions to be able to tell chemical from nuclear, and this one apparently looks nuclear. It also looks to be 0.5kT or so. That makes it by far the smallest yield 1st test ever. Which either means they have perfected making small bombs (which is incredibly complicated and wasn't done by the Los Alamos people until 15 years after their first test), or they failed in their test. The latter is very likely.

I remember they called China in advance. According to the first article I found on Google news they told China to expect a 4KT explosion. Definitely sounds like a failed test.

It's not quite verbed according to this article. I think it's close enough.
http://www.canada.com/topics/finance/story.html?id =0013a614-239a-4210-89f5-7993f86d64fd&k=40444

A Microsoft spokeswoman in Montreal told CanWest News Service that ``it was pointed out to us'' during focus groups in the province that the proposed brand name sounded much like a French-Canadian term used as a euphemism for penis or vagina.

``All of Quebec has been giggling for the last couple of days at the thought of Mr. Gates swearing that there was an 80 per cent chance that he'd whip out his little zoune before the holiday season ...''

Arar comes to mind but I think he deserved it
Oh, did you miss the recent inquiry report where it was determined that the RCMP passed on erroneous or misleading information to the US, and where Ara was pretty well cleared of involvemnet with Al Qaeda? What exactly did he do to "deserve it"? An apparently innocent man was tortured for a year. Of course in the U.S. you might never have had an inquiry; the whole issue would have been swept under the carpet with Arar having no chance to examine the evidence against him, getting tried by a military tribunal, and the people who screwed up getting a promotion.

Zune also sounds similar to zoune , a Canadian-French euphemism for penis or vagina. Size does matter, my Zune is bigger than yours.

The group was "planning to commit a series of terrorist attacks against solely Canadian targets in southern Ontario,"

"This group took steps to acquire three tons of ammonium nitrate and other components necessary to create explosive devices," he said.

"To put this in context, the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people took one ton of ammonium nitrate."

. ... "This group posed a real and serious threat," McDonell said. "It had the capacity and intent to carry out these attacks."

And I'd definitely avoid trying to flush it as an alternative.

In case you haven't seen it already here's your story from another passenger's perspective:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html ?id=1c0072fe-4d98-44e4-8414-652f83e27868&k=11746

It is written by Prof. Amy Knight who is the author of How the Cold War Began. Basically she's sympathetic to the guy who dropped his iPod and says that the current regulations are being enforced in a ridiculous manner.

This time I am talking about your post. Aljazeera is not nearly as fundamentalist as e.g. Fox News, but even if it were, it would not automatically mean that a "science article" published there is nonsense.
Like every other news source, they get most of these articles from agencies that sell them.

So if you prefer to read that nonsense from a different source, go here:
    http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.2 0060819.LETTERS19-12/TPStory/Comment
    http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id= 143&art_id=vn20060817031855765C442092
    http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html ?id=3d68da16-b7b1-4334-bf4d-aa9ebdd0f303&k=89468
and probably hundreds more all over the internet.

I think this argument holds best with things like pot or shrooms which are hard (or pointless) to cut with less desirables.

Maybe you should read this following article...


Dugald Christie died on a years-long mission of conscience drove him for years
He bicycled to work. He lived in a rented basement suite. He was a transplanted Scot who eschewed scotch but drank hot water with cream and sugar. A devout Anglican, he kept his offices in a church, arrived for work at daybreak and left, usually, 12 to 14 hours later. He could have made lots of money in his lifetime. He chose instead to make a difference.

Dugald Christie was a lawyer, but he was not like most lawyers. He was not like most people. A colleague called him "the Mother Teresa of the bar." When the Trial Lawyers Association of B.C. honoured him for his life's work in March, he was introduced as being "every lawyer's conscience of their professional obligations" -- this high praise earned in a profession often accused of not having a conscience.

He died Monday at the age of 65. He was struck and killed by a minivan on the Trans-Canada Highway near Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.

He was riding his bicycle, and it was his conscience that had brought him to that fateful place.

He was cycling across Canada to raise awareness about the average person's lack of access to the judicial system. Christie called it the ABCs of true justice -- affordable, brief and comprehensible -- and he was gathering signatures along the way on a petition he was going to present to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. His ultimate destination was St. John's, N.L., where he was to address the Canadian Bar Association.

Christie was the founder and director of the Western Canada Society to Access Justice.

Its work is all done pro bono -- the waiving of legal fees as a charitable act -- and it was Christie's job, or rather his cause in life, to get top-flight lawyers to represent needy clients.

He did this through sheer hard work. Christie was an indefatigable and constant presence -- as good consciences are -- and he was always working the phones to get donations or a lawyer's help.

He knew almost every lawyer in town, and his calls enjoyed a sort of fame among the legal community. With a trace of his Scottish brogue, he would open, simply, with "Dugald Christie here," and the lawyer on the other end of the line knew it was time to pony up.

His work paid off. By the time of his death, Christie and the society had 61 clinics from Campbell River to Winnipeg and more than 400 lawyers donating their services. He made it into the largest legal aid service in the province.

"I have tremendous respect for his ability and commitment to pro bono work," said B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Brenner, "and I know that he had a goal that his clinics would be available to 95 per cent of all British Columbians. I think he achieved that this spring."

Brenner was a fan of Christie's.

"I have in the past described him as not everyone's cup of tea, but he was an achiever, a man who didn't just talk about doing good, but worked hard to do good, and I have great respect for him. I use that old journalistic saying to describe him: He comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable."

More often than not, he afflicted those in the law itself.

n 2003, he filed a formal complaint against B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Mary Southin, accusing her of encouraging people to defy smoking laws while continuing to sit in judgment of others.

He maintained Southin had "brought the administration of justice into disrepute" by refusing to stop smoking in her office, despite a 1998 Workers' Compensation ban against smoking in the workplace. He filed the complaint after it was reported then attorney-general Geoff Plant had okayed a $19,000 ventilation system for her office at the Vancouver Law Courts.

But it was Christie's prolonged fight against the province's move in

Well, you are spewing bullshit. None of the attacks were against 'innocent civilians'. Israel does not target innocent civilians, they target Hezbollah terrorists, they fire at rocket launcher sites. Civilians and the UN happen to be there, sure.

Read this. This is from a Canadian UN soldier who got killed by the way.

And this: U.N. Chief Accuses Hezbollah of 'Cowardly Blending' Among Refugees

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html ?id=33a4a1a7-35b4-48ed-9c4a-9786ffc0dd14&k=52830&p =2

2 story building destroyed because there were supposedly rockets fired from there.

Two sides to every story, but 57 civilians killed in one attack could have been prevented, especially when there was secondary explosions from the alleged rockets.

Sure, Canadian police are angels and never do anything wrong. For example, spraying photographers with pepper spray or arresting photographers at a rally or slapping a handcuffed woman Etc. Etc.

You mean the UN post Hezbollah was using as a shield, right?

Buildings that have joined the grid no longer need to use electricity to run chillers and save nearly 90 per cent of their power costs. The amount of coal-fired electricity required to run air conditioning in those same buildings would produce 79,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases the equivalent of 15,800 cars on the road, the company estimates. http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.h tml?id=7dcd955a-d69f-4bc7-a553-9a4798d388ed&k=8946 7/

...... Likely has more to do with their lack of funding:

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.h tml?id=b07beeab-4ad7-4fba-a2d7-f223bc16cd70&k=5921 2

How about if the US government spent some of the $1 TRILLION we're going to spend on the Iraq War on giving war veterans a home?

Separating out the impact of human activity from natural climate variation is extremely difficult. Nonetheless, the IPCC concluded there is a "discernible human influence" on climate. This means the observed global warming is unlikely to be the result of natural variability alone and that human activities are at least partially responsible.

So, they say it's hard to tell if there's a lot of influence. It then cites the IPCC study --- which happens to be the same group of people as run RealClimte, and whose work is criticized in the NAS report.

Because human emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases continue to climb, and because they remain in the atmosphere for decades to centuries (depending on which gas), we're committing ourselves to a warmer climate in the future. The IPCC projects an average global temperature increase of 1-4.5F (0.6-2.5C) in the next fifty years, and 2.5-10.4F (1.4-5.8C) in the next century. Temperatures in some parts of the globe (e.g., the polar regions) are expected to rise even faster. Even the low end of the IPCC's projected range represents a rate of climate change unprecedented in the past 10,000 years.[Emphasis mine.]

Look, it's really worth reading around a bit in the literature, and not just on RealClimate. For example, read Pielke's site --- he's respectable, he's not associated with either end of the spectrum (more or less represented by Al Gore and Real Climate on one end, and Climate Audit on the other.)

Read about the anomalies in the behavior of the proxies in the 20th century --- tree rings don't seem to show the same reaction to temperature in warm periods like the last 100 years, versus cold periods like 1500-1600. Some of these studies suggest that the proxy data used by IPCC and MBH may have a systematic error of about -1 degree in warmer periods --- which, if true, would completely eliminate the "unusual warming" signal in itself, and turn "global warming" into normally cyclic climate changes.

Or have a look at Dave Stockwells work (eg here and here) which shows pretty clearly that the same statistical process used by the MGH and IPCC methods, applied to random "pink noise" --- random data in which small variations are more probable than large variations --- will show a dramatic "hockey stick".

Check out some of the (not very widely publicized) dissenters like hits:

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Or this:

While the gods must consider An Inconvenient Truth the ultimate comedy, real climate scientists are crying over Al Gore's new film. This is not just because the ex-vice-president commits numerous basic science mistakes. They are also concerned that many in the media and public will fail to realize that this film amounts to little more than science fiction. .... In fact, the correlation between CO2 and temperature that Gore speaks about so confidently is simply non-existent over all meaningful time scales. U of O climate researcher Professor Jan Veizer demonstrated that, over geologic time, the two are not linked at all. Over the intermediate time scales Gore focuses on, the ice cores show that CO2 increases don't precede, and therefore don't cause, warming. Rather, they follow temperature rise -- by as much as 800 years. Even in the past century, the co

That is not the mainstream opinion of Bill Gates. Far from it. Most people view Gates as a glorious role model. According to a 2005 Gallup poll, Gates ties for second in the "Most Admired List In U.S." An Esquire poll of men that was published a few days ago rates Gates tying for second in "Most Popular Celebrity Dinner Companions." Gates ranks #1 in World's Most Admired CEOs of 2005.

My initial reaction to this article is that it looks like propaganda. If you read each of the quotes from the scientist in it, you'll noticed that the qualifying adjectives around each of the stated facts in quotations minimize the importance of any observable facts that can't be denied, and the attributive verbs for the quotes are chosen to slant the reader's perception as well.

Climate change experts, like most scientists, tend to be pretty circumspect with their public statements and avoid hyperbole, so the quotes calling Gore "pathetic" and "an embarrassment" are a red flag as well.

Any "feature" article is going to have something of a slant--and there's nothing wrong with that--but the words in article seemed so consistently well-chosen that they seemed vetted by some PR flack versed in the art of using words to sell your opinions to stupid people.

While that's not enough, in itself, to make me disregard the article, it did make me want to see what I could find out about this "Tom Harris" guy who wrote it. Turns out this guy has made something of a cottage industry out of "debunking" global warming, and in at least one case has co-written an article with the Patterson he quotes in this article. He doesn't disclose this fact, although, in fairness, it was written for a "journal" that, amazingly for 2006, has no web presence.

Harris also wrote another article along the same lines as this one, entitled "The Gods Are Laughing", which you can find here:

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/s tory.html?id=d0235a70-33f1-45b3-803b-829b1b3542ef

This one starts out with a lead paragraph that points out that *real* scientists disagree with "liberal arts graduate" Gore about global warming. More red flags here, because people with a good case to make generally don't have to resort to challenging the scientific credentials of their opponents.

The fact that Gore has no PhD in climatology isn't really germane to the debate, although it seems to be a major focus of these pairs of articles. Although once certainly needs some advanced training to conduct climatology research, one would hope that you wouldn't need to go to school for eight years just to be able to read the conclusions section of a peer-reviewed paper. Else, what's the point of doing research, if your findings can only be conveyed to other scientist who are already working from 99.9% of the same knowledge base as you? And one certainly doesn't need a PhD to talk to climatologists and build a consensus view of their opinions.

The director of the atmosphere and energy bits of the Sierra Club of Canada wrote a missive below that explains in more detail a few of the shady rhetorical tricks Harris uses, and which I have alluded to above:

http://www.sierraclub.ca/national/postings/climate -skeptic-response.html

Personally, I'm starting to lean toward the this-guy-is-a-shill theory, myself.

Mr. Egan is president of the High Park Group, a public policy consulting firm that focuses largely on energy issues out of its offices in Toronto and Ottawa. He is retained by the Canadian Electricity Association on a range of issues, including U.S. advocacy (monitoring the U.S. Congress and Administration on issues of interest to the Canadian electricity industry).

More scientists skeptical of Gore: article from Canada's National Post. Seems like much more of a mainstream publication.

first - accepted by WHO? Would you still say that if you didn't agree with him?

My specific opinion is that Bush is either a moron or a great actor and a genocidal madman. I firmly believe the maxim that says never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity so there you are.

I believe that most Canadians would agree with the above opinion. polls bear that out.

I believe that most Canadians were of the opinion that the US should not have invaded Iraq and that the justification provided was dodgy at best. One must conclude that Bush was either too stupid to realize that he was being snowed or that he deliberately endangered Americans to satisfy a private agenda. See above.

I believe that US/Canada relations (in fact all US foreign relations) deteriorated sharply when Bush came to power. This is not the fault of the Liberals.

Regardless of one's opinions of the current or past government, you have to be happy that Harper was not in power to be Bush's Chamberlain (a role that Mr. Major has filled remarkably well) for Iraq.

As for the softwood lumber dispute alluded to earlier (and by proxy US trade in general): I feel that the government was not nearly confrontational enough on that issue. For a period after the tariffs were introduced, the (largely american-owned) forest companies greatly INCREASED exports of raw and finished lumber. The tariff has been found to be illegal in every court it has been debated yet the US continues to wipe their asses with NAFTA (and every other treaty or trade agreement) and now Harper is "settling" by giving away our resources. If it were up to me, I would assess the same or greater tariff on any raw logs or non-VA lumber crossing the border. The US could then remove their tariff and have the same effect without the net effect of the US govt profiting from Canadian resources.

This is a time when we need a government with a spine and I think that Harper, while an intelligent man, may be too much of an opportunist to grow one. The Liberal's don't deserve to be in power but I believe that to be a domestic failing, not an international one. I believe that Cretien and Martin handled Bush quite well (consider Bush's current relationship with the UN compared to 2002).

btw...anti-bush != anti-american. My brother is American (God save his soul).

JMHO.

The story with DNA confirmation is five days old.

At an first year economics class (which I took in my final year of University a few years ago) an interesting point was brought up which should be pointed out to the RIAA. If the price of a product is too high (generally honest) people will move towards non-market activities in order to obtain your product; this means they will use the black-market (allofmp3.com) or steal your product (P2P). When you're at this point you will see exponential growth in the number of people who use these non-market activities in order to obtain your product. Basically, it is my belief that people were frustrated (at this level) with the cost of music and Napster came along and showed people that there was another way to obtain music; when this happened the value of music to consumers dropped yet the costs associated with obtaining the music did not.

Now, the RIAA is looking at the situation from the perspective that the Music industry would become so much more profitable if they eliminated non-market ways to obtain the music (killing piracy), because the music industrys costs are lower (because electronic distribution is cheap yet you can still charge your artists for "Recoup" [that is broken cd's and what not]). The RIAA claims to protect artists even though artists do not want their protection ( http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/arts/story .html?id=b9e40de3-8f2e-40dd-9fca-8afc71b72e1f&k=70 622 ).

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.

When our results concerning the instability of nonperiodic flow are applied to the atmosphere, which is ostensibly nonperiodic, they indicate that predictions of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly. In view of the incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long range forecasting would seem to be non-existent.

Under the Kyoto treaty, Canada is committed to a six per cent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2012. Yet emissions have risen by 30 per cent. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has said the target is impossible to meet.

You're being silly. Those are the NATO ISAF attached troops as of February 2005. Other places on the internet give different numbers for the current U.S involvement in Afghanistan.

19,000 with planned draw down to 16,000:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html ?id=50827c9b-acae-4b3f-ab68-2b9fe8018139&k=37894
(same as above)
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&nam e=News&file=article&sid=4331&mode=thread&order=0&t hold=0

Neither of those links is particularly friendly to the US...

Have to agree after readong another another article on the same story. The guy was turned down for his study. Not because there isn't ample evidence that evolution is "correct" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean). But because it wasn't felt objective results could be obtained.

Here's the SSHRC committee's response (from the mentioned article) for his study titled: "Detrimental effects of popularizing anti-evolution's intelligent design theory on Canadian students, teachers, parents, administrators and policymakers."

The committee found that the candidates were qualified. However, it judged the proposal did not adequately substantiate the premise that the popularizing of Intelligent Design Theory had detrimental effects on Canadian students, teachers, parents and policymakers. Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct. It was not convinced, therefore, that research based on these assumptions would yield objective results. In addition, the committee found that the research plans were insufficiently elaborated to allow for an informed evaluation of their merit. In view of its reservations the committee recommended that no award be made.

The SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) is not a backwaters school board stacked with religious fundamentalists. It is a mainstream, government-monitored agency that hands out almost $300mm per year of social sciences funding. Only 40% of applications get approved. In this case, it looks like they were justified in rejecting his application. Indeed, it looks like Alters is being a bit of a publicity-hunting suck. From another source:

Eva Schacherl, a spokeswoman for the council, said Wednesday the multidisciplinary committee was not convinced the proposal's scholarly approach was sound or that it would provide objective results on the question.
"I just want to underline that it is not correct to suggest that the funding proposal was not accepted because the council or the committee had doubts about evolution," she said.
"We understand the way the committee's comments were transcribed or written down or summarized could have misled him and we really regret that the note sent to him gave the impression that the committee had doubts about evolution. That was really not what the committee intended."
Schacherl noted the council has funded other research projects on evolution and gave $175,000 to Alters last year for a three-year project on concepts of biological evolution in Islamic society.

In short, just because you have the right idea doesn't mean you automatically get funding for a flawed study.

"I would argue it is not as earth-shattering as they make it out to be," says Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto at Mississauga, Ont., and senior editor of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Reisz says Tiktaalik is one of several interesting creatures that lived millions of years before the first animals walked the Earth. He doubts Tiktaalik ever actually left the water, and speculates it evolved its interesting features to cope with rapidly flowing water in. "It's an important find, there is no question about that," he says. "But it's being a little bit overblown."

Best part of the whole controversy is that now everyone and his cat seems to be coming out with a theory why global warming is not caused by humans.

A couple of the latest blame things like cosmic rays http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html ?id=13ef7006-c549-4543-8ed8-89b8f4ca63d6&k=42927
, and the Tunguska Event http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/umw elt_naturschutz/bericht-56600.html .

(I'm willing to bet bet someone, some where has a tie-in between global warming, the Kennedy assasination and bigfoot.) };-)

Toronto Sun http://www.torontosun.com/

Regina Leader Post http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/index.html

Both only publish partial content online. In the case of the Leader Post, they provide the option of an online instead of print subscription, which gives you access to the full content.

No, the french woman was using an incorrect phase, so don't think she was that competent. Speaking in literal translations does not make you functionally bilingual.

Sorry, but I have a problem the french, and their language. Read This and you'll start to understand the double standard that exists in Canada.

I think you are under the impression that artists see any of this money. This year was the first that any artist has seen any of the collected levy and less than half of what was collected was distributed.

Canada has a strong multi-party system. Look at the results from Monday's election: Conservatives won 124 seats, Librals 103, Bloc Quebecois 51, New Democratic Party 29, with the Green party not winning any seats but getting nearly 5% of the vote. Granted, only the Conservatives and Librals have actually won an election, but the other parties form a very strong opposition, especially when the winning party does not actually have a majority.

There is also more variation between these parties than between the US Democrats and Republicans, even discounting the Bloc, which is essentially a separatist party. I think the multi-party system encourages more variation, because if two parties become too similar in their agendas, other parties are there to fill in the void.

Pretty soon the RFID implants will become mandatory, or nearly so. If we put up with fingerprinting for drivers licenses, retinal scans to get kids from school, there's only RFID left. I remember an article about how "liberating" it was to have an RFID chip, and how much easier it'll make our life. I figure I'll hold out as long as I can.

here

via this BoingBoing post