Slashdot Mirror

For Canada, they should probably include BC in that too:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/03/18/bc-supreme-ruling-telus-class-action.html

There's been an avalanche of research published in the last year or so regarding these types of things, with a lot more scientific backing than the little bit I read in this article.

In one of many articles on the topic, this one raised a whole new series of questions about our ancestry:

Scientists unveil a newly-discovered, ancient human ancestor

Or check out these that all relate to different areas of genetic research, most empirical, one modeled, all relating supporting information about homo sapiens (that's us!) inbreeding with various offshoots and close relatives, with us apparently coming out the better? for it.

Neanderthal genes 'survive in us'
Sex with Neanderthals boosted human immunity
Neanderthals, Humans Interbred—First Solid DNA Evidence
Frontiers of Anthropology
Ancient DNA Reveals Secrets of Human History
Fossilised finger points to previously unknown group of human relatives

Ontario, Quebec and Alberta actually have legislation that prevents such a clause, which renders Section 15 invalid. This is mentioned in an article about a BC consumer filing a lawsuit against Telus, see this. I haven't tried to track down the actual legislation that prevents these clauses, but CBC tends to be fairly reliable.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice.

Chances are that power plant was there already when you purchased your property originally, which was not designed to survive a 100-year event, unless you also believe that skyscrapers designed in the 1960s were pancake-immune to aircraft impact.

I also live on the Pacific rim, and when the 400-year event arrives (presently tending toward overdue), I won't be expecting to sell any real-estate for a long while. I'm not looking around at any major infrastructure thinking it will still be there because the government said so. I live on Vancouver Island. Until recently, it was comforting to know we had the Sea Kings standing by (also known as "flying coffins").
Requiem for the Sea King

The Sea Kings require 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight, and they are unavailable for operations 40 per cent of the time.

It's an interesting tidbit on the intertubes that people with the clearest perception of risk tend to perform worse rather than better. Here's the version by the dulcet duo:
Lying to Ourselves

After the KHL crash, NHL players everywhere are being quoted about their gut response to the surprising fact of mortality. From Ryan Smyth, the epitome of a blue-collar multimillionaire with his feet on the ground: "You see how easily things can be taken away, so you can't take anything for granted when you leave your family and your friends behind." It was true yesterday, and it will be true tomorrow, yet the high-performance types tend to batch process with lightening bolts of grief comprehension.

Here's why I'm not planning to transact after the big one, regardless of whether it's overblown in the media, or not:
Thomas theorem
If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.

If the situation was as overblown as you make it seem, you would make tons of money investing in land around the area, yet no one is buying

And this is precisely what a rational person expects, if you're depressed enough to see this ahead of time. Sharp investors don't invest on value, they invest on timing. While grab an illiquid, under-priced asset when you can buy a slightly less illiquid asset for roughly the same price a year or two into the future? If you've read articles about the recovery in New Orleans, this is what eventually happened. In the interval, all you are buying is red tape.

It won't cheer you up, but it will make matters clearer in your mind if you imagine the accident as spewing a cubic terabecquerel of red tape with a half-life of five years.

Where government tends to fall down in risk management is grandfathering what came before instead of applying the mothballs when clearer heads prevail. Industry shows up with pole axes in fine hone whenever the government threatens to revoke a sunk cost, even when the sunk cost is poised over a gaping chasm with tonsils wagging.

Bad modelling hasn't yet stopped "scientists" from influencing policy making... [...] Yes Greenpeace, I am looking at you.

When did scaling government buildings to protest climate change become science?

Not the same thing and you know that very well.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/08/11/riots-men-killed-reverend.html

Egypt and Libya are examples of oppressed peoples rising up to demand inalienable rights.

The UK is an example of chav scum smashing shit (and killing innocent fellow citizens, lest you forget!) for shits and giggles.

Really?
http://www.cbc.ca/m/touch/news/story/2011/08/09/pol-internet-privacy.html

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/pm-vows-to-rush-comprehensive-slate-of-crime-bills-into-law/article2046544/

These links are a tad newer than the election

So a train derailed, and people were evacuated as a precaution, but the hazmat cars were empty and it was no big deal. If you consider that tantamount to a catastrophic, easily preventable collision killing 35 people and wounding 191, then I think your standards are pretty high. Derailments happen, but in the U.S. we have safety equipment and procedures rigorously enforced to prevent casualties. Only on the notoriously underfunded Washington, D.C., metro system can I recall an accident caused by equipment failure and not operator error--and this only happened because commuter rail systems are not regulated by the federal government like intercity rail.

Here's a few I use all the time:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/

http://www.pandasthumb.org/

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance

http://scienceblogs.com/channel/24-hours/?utm_source=globalChannel&utm_medium=link

http://sciencehack.com/

For the last thirty years I've been getting my weekly dose of science news from Quirks & Quarks on CBC radio. Shows are available for download or streaming online as soon as they air, and their online archive of episodes goes back to 2000.

I witnessed the best bit of cynical news history yesterday and the anchor delivered it with a very straight face.

News anchor: More high ranking police and government officials resigned today due to allegations of corruption and payoffs from Murdoch Co. News anchor: In related news the reporter who blew the whistle on the phone hacking was found dead in his apartment today, police do not suspect foul play."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/07/18/rupert-murdoch-phone-hacking-scandal.html

When a scientist employed by the Naval Research Laboratories invents a better laser, is something of value produced -- yes.

- the same scientist could be working for a private company, doing the same thing. If government was not destroying the credit, the savings, the capital that makes private companies invest into their business. If government wasn't busy destroying the currency itself, many would be able to invest into their businesses, rather than having to simply search for ways to escape the destruction.

When an employee of the city picks up your garbage, is a service of value performed -- yes

- there should be no government involvement into this at all. This here was Toronto, not US, but the point is valid.

Besides, I said "produce", not "service". Services can be performed by any business, government is definitely not better at it, but mainly worse, they don't have to compete, their monopoly is tight and their unions don't care about the customer.

When a SEAL puts a bullet through the head of bin Laden, is a service of value performed -- yes.

- wouldn't it be great if the government stuck to its role - minimum military for protection, and didn't stick its nose into every hell hole on the planet CREATING the fucking terrorist in the first place?

They create the problem and then they "solve" it. And at what cost? The wars? The dead, that didn't have to be dead? No thanks, you can keep that 'public service'.

All examples of public employees producing valuable goods and services.

- at what cost and to what end? What was not done by the private sector, because the public sector ate the money, the credit, the resources, regulated the hell out of private sector and destroyed a bunch of businesses by subsidizing monsters it feeds off of?

Those are questions very well worth asking.

but you're still the one operating the car and presumably won't follow instructions to drive into another car.

You have a lot more faith in drivers than I have...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/29/swiss-van-driver-gets-stuck-up-a-glorified-goat-track-blames/
http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20101006/gps-swamp-101006/
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2011/03/03/nb-gps-driver-speaks.html
http://www.switched.com/2009/02/27/gps-Lihttp://www.switched.com/2009/02/27/gps-leads-truck-to-impassable-road-for-5-days/?icid=200100397x1219177496x1201334806

That was simply Harper's attempt to spin it and blame the opposition party. Try this link instead: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2010/10/13/policy-cost-canada-103.html

No. They can give you cancer just like most other things.

On the question of using condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in Africa, the pope says they don't work.

"You can't resolve it with the distribution of condoms," the Pope told reporters aboard his plane to Yaounde, Cameroon. "On the contrary, it increases the problem."

Their stance does not seem to be logical or consistent. Given the number of people in Africa, including children, infected with HIV it most certainly is not moral.

The hands-free issue is moot:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2008/10/17/cellphone-handsfree.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html?ito=feeds-newsxml
http://www.tgdaily.com/mobility-features/57097-hands-free-calls-could-be-just-as-dangerous-on-the-roads
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2006/jun/30/mobilephones.uknews
http://socialtimes.com/distracted-driving-dangerous-but-no-evidence-hands-free-laws-help_b69790
http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-driving/
http://news.yahoo.com/hands-free-cell-phone-usage-equally-dangerous-while-170124007.html
http://www.infoniac.com/offbeat-news/hands-free-phones-more-dangerous-for-drivers-than-alcoholic-drinks.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012393/Distracting-hands-free-devices-dangerous-mobile.html
http://www.iol.co.za/motoring/industry-news/hands-free-phoning-just-as-dangerous-1.1096622

Seems it was published everywhere except mainstream US media, which strongly indicates that it's true but contrary to corporate interests. I guess more accidents translates to more car sales. Ideally cars should be as safe as possible for the driver and passengers, but difficult to drive (i.e. small windows, confusing/distracting features, controls, and meters), and most importantly more likely to be written off from even minor collisions. Sounds about right. Too bad about the bad wrecks that kill people, but hey, business is business.

You said,

Nobody in the Free Gaza movement gives a shit about being a delivery boy for rice and cooking oil. Journalists should really listen when organizations state their goals in public, but who gives a shit when the facts don't fit the narrative.

The protestors publicly stated that their goal was publicity for the cause of the Palestinians.

Your bigoted attitude is unfortunately not unique. In Canada recently the Conservative government (actually, a bunch of Right Wing politicians) recently released a report stated that "antisemitism" was a big problem, and that denying the existence of Israel was a "hate crime".

With people in power stating that kind of propaganda, its no wonder that places like Israel (and Syria, amongst other states that have no moral legitimacy) continue to exist.

And that Right Wing, pro-Israel "non-profit" Web site that you link to isn't exactly unbiased. It's religion that is the problem (in this case, Islam, Judaism and Christianity), and NOT the Palestinians. You people always try to conflate the issues.

Reference:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2011/07/07/pol-antisemitism-report.html

We also dumped the 2 dollar bill, so that now we have $1 and $2 coins. The $1 coin is called a "loonie" after the picture of a loon on the front (no, I don't mean the Queen -- she's on the other side :-)). When the $2 coin came out, it came to be called a "toonie", even though it has a picture of polar bears on it. Those are the standard layouts. At various times they change the pictures on the coins for commemorative reasons, such as the olympics. My favorite example, though, was the fuss over the time the mint changed the Canadian quarter to have a poppy in the middle. Apparently some US defense contractors thought the poppy was a suspicious example of "nanotechnology" when it showed up in their change. I think you guys in the US need to jazz up your currency a bit.

http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/11/bittorrent-blocking-goes-north-canadian-isp-admits-to-throttling-p2p.ars

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2009/07/14/crtc-bell-internet-traffic-management-providers-customers.html

You're an idiot. Oh and I opened 7 Google results to find these two articles for you. The rest were crappy blogs & opinion pages that weren't really useful... but I suppose I should have divined that instead of checking them out quickly.

They did read the riot act, followed by plenty of tear gas and flash bombs. Several news articles have mentioned that...

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2011/06/15/bc-stanley-cup-fans-post-game-7.html

Problem is, the riot act might be useful when there are 100 rioters and a similar number of police, but with 100,000 people in the streets there is no way to "arrest anyone who refused to leave"... all the police could really focus on was containing the riot to a limited area and keeping themselves from major injury.

And those reasons are mostly historical. To say that lacrosse has been more popular than hockey in Canada as a whole within the last thirty years is plain ignorance. According to http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2010/06/07/con-lacrosse-cra.html the Canadian Lacrosse Association represents 40,000 members. That is insignificant compared to the popularity of hockey.

Lacrosse may have had its ups and downs in terms of popularity, but it has been a long time since it has been more popular than hockey in Canada.

Maybe I'm just a poor arsonist, but I assume it's a little difficult to light a police car on fire with a box of matches or a Bic lighter.

They did read the riot act!

Tell this the swiss. Their centuries old tradition of direct democracy was wrong all along!

I'll see your long-standing democracy and raise you suppression of freedom of religion. Pure democracy works great when there are no pesky minorities to worry about. Swiss-style politics isn't for everyone.

Case in point: Robert Dziekanski, a Polish traveller to Canada who was neglected for several hours in the airport immigration area, and who was then tasered to death by four RCMP officers within a few seconds of their arrival on the scene.

The RCMP confiscated this video and only released it after enormous public pressure. Imagine what would have happened without this evidence. As it was, the police failed to separately debrief those officers in order to plausibly minimize the appearance of collusion. The same four officers are now charged with perjury after telling a fabricated story in which Dziekanski "attacked them with a stapler." This is the story which the RCMP administration vigorously defended and then ultimately abandoned - all at public cost.

During the inquiry, the RCMP introduced massive procedural delays upon request to produce the internal documents recorded as a result of the incident. After documents were finally released, they were found to be incomplete. Significant among these, a police email suggested the officers made plans to taser Dziekanski even before they saw him. The RCMP lawyer eventually withdrew in tears after acknowledging the omission.

This is what the police did in the face of independent evidence. Imagine what would have happened without this video as evidence.

The U.S.A. and several other first world nations (to my knowledge) have policies in place preventing crops from being grown at maximum production rates/acreage.

I'm under the impression that first world nations (U.S.A., Britain, Japan, etc) have a near flat population growth curve. It is the up-and-coming third world nations that encourage massive overpopulation (China, Africa, India, etc).

If these nations cannot produce enough food to feed their own populations, let them starve and their societies collapse. Problem solved. Darwinism at it's finest, and it keeps the first world nations in a social/cultural position of preeminence.

As an alternative, repeal the policies keeping first world farms from producing the wanted crops and selling them to anyone who wants to buy. However, that would require Politicians to admit there was something they or their predecessors screwed up. Good Luck!

As a side note, China doesn't need too much help reaching a Malthusian solution. Check the male to female ratio in China. http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/story/2011/03/14/sex-selection-china-india.html
People this irresponsible frighten me.

If Steve Jobs wants a lake and a forest around his building, then you can be damn sure he'll have a lake and forest around his building.

I think you are thinking of Steve Harper, not Steve Jobs...

renesys: info about network
saturday's news: Syrian forces kill 6: protesters - Government eases internet stranglehold
current news: Syrian forces kill 35 in fresh crackdown: report

'Be patient Syria, the victory is written by the blood,'

renesys: info about network
saturday's news: Syrian forces kill 6: protesters - Government eases internet stranglehold
current news: Syrian forces kill 35 in fresh crackdown: report

'Be patient Syria, the victory is written by the blood,'

I agree with you. Just because Wikileaks is being disparaged does not justify vigilante behavior. But, for what Wikileaks has released: it is more truth than our governments release, and in my value-system I believe that is more important than national security: it is what really happened. I'll give you a concrete example, here in Canada - where I live - our government during the run-up to the Iraq war was telling us: We do not support the Iraq war. And meanwhile, they were telling the USA in private: we cannot support you publicly because of the "political climate" against the war here, however: we will do everything we can to support your invasion. Tell me, what is our government if it is not the expression of the people who gave it a mandate? Canadian CITIZENS, en-mass were against the Iraq war: yet our government made no case to support their actions and instead pulled a back-room deal with the hopes it would never surface in history. And without leaking: it never would have.

Now, moderators: if you are going to bother to mod this *anything*, consider: Informative.

GPS can kill.

Apart from a few poor people being blown up

Maybe in the UK, but where I live you're in far more danger of being blown down.

Here is a Quirks and Quarks segment discussing the science of religion. The have two scientists, one who thinks that religion was selected for to improve social cohesion, and the other who thinks that religion is an unintended side effect of our curiosity and desire to understand things.

Send machines, not people.

Voyager and the Third Age of Discovery

I know you'll just automaticcaly mod this down and not even listen (and THINK) about what the man has to say. But on the off chance one or two people are still capable of critical reasoning when pictures of Space Nuttery are around, the link is there.

He did originally deny it in 2001. He did acknowledge responsibility in 2004.

But feel free to ignore it. ~

It's a legit pwn, but if it requires Flash, it's not a Chrome pwn.

If the dike fails and the land gets flooded, who cares if the dike was earth or stone? The point is that the place is flooded.

And that analogy is apropos considering what's going down here.

I think you've got it. There have been suggestions that the US had no court anywhere that ObL could have been tried. The obvious place is the ICJ/World Court in the Hague.

The US has a perfectly adequate legal system to handle the likes of Bin Laden.... right here. fact sheet

But it's not clear what the charges might have been. It's likely that the US "had nothing on the guy" for the WTC attack, other than his publicly praising the people who did it, and that's not exactly a criminal act

US GRAND JURY INDICTMENT AGAINST USAMA BIN LADEN

Also, Bin Laden admitted or demonstrated his association with the 9/11 attacks on multiple occasions.

Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11
Video Shows Bin Laden, 9/11 Hijackers
Bin Laden '9/11 video' broadcast

No doubt there is plenty of other material evidence linking him to other crimes under either the Law of War or US criminal law.

The US has been openly and loudly calling this "justice". This isn't being missed by people with similar desires in the rest of the world. Since the US government has effectively announced that killing someone without any sort of trial is "justice", we can expect that many others in the world are planning to bring the US to "justice" in a similar fashion.

You've got this wrong on two points. First, I very much doubt that any group of would-be terrorists is just waiting for the US to "bend the rules" so that they feel justified in attacking. Second, the US is at war with Al Qaeda under the authority of the Congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force passed after 9/11, so raids to capture or kill its members is completely legitimate. It is also quite fair seeing as Bin Laden declared war on the US in the 1990s.

Actually, Osama never took credit for those deaths, which is why he wasn't formally wanted by FBI for the 9/11 bombings (FBI most wanted [fbi.gov]). The video which was shown on television shortly after the bombings, where he allegedly took the blame, was badly translated.

Personally, I'm not entirely sure if Osama had his hand in the 9/11 bombings, or if other people did it inspired by him

Actually, Bin Laden did take responsibility for the 9/11 attacks, on more than one occasion. Here is one:
Bin Laden claims responsibility for 9/11

Here are some videos of him with some of the 9/11 attackers:
Video Shows Bin Laden, 9/11 Hijackers
Bin Laden '9/11 video' broadcast

And maybe you should try another page:

Bin Laden was a suspect in a number of terrorist attacks around the world in addition to the 9/11 attacks.

The link you provide is apparently based solely on the federal indictments - that is, a matter of criminal law. More details here.

After the mass attacks of 9/11, Congress responded with the Authorization for Use of Military Force, and Al Qaeda became a military problem. I don't know that the FBI continually updates the crimes section on the most wanted list.

Bin Laden's demands? Americans must convert to Islam, discard the Constitution, and govern with Sharia law, or Al Qaeda will keep attacking the US. Bin Laden's offier - convert or die. Some choice, eh?

For those in need: Debunking the 9/11 Myths: Special Report

A (shorter) AP report is here.

Here's another good, recent comment from Neil Macdonald on CBC.

You obviously want to vote NDP this election but just don't know it yet. One of the things on Jack Layton's platform is election reform, specifically proportional representation which is exactly what you want. With proportional representation, issues won't be "rounded-out" by arbitrary dividing areas up into ridings. National issues say with about 10% interest will get 10% power in Parliament. Not swept under the rug as-is now because the member you want to vote for is half-way across the country and there isn't enough interest in your area to have someone on your ballot. Vote the NDP in, get the election system fixed and then vote as you will. Layton has a PhD in Political Science if you read that article by the way so he knows where the rough spots are.

Of course, voting in the NDP to fix the election system takes foresight to see that you can vote in the next election for whoever you want with a better system. Most voters don't want/can't see beyond one election so it's a difficult proposition to push.

*shrug*

Blockbuster? The company that filed for bankruptcy and that's also having a hard time in Canada (too expensive compared to competitors)?

Blockbuster isn't competition at all, except maybe if you're still thinking in terms of VHS tapes.

Space junk.

Quirks and Quarks had a story a few months ago about the quest to make anti-hydrogen.

You missed the part where he chased her and her partner down after the show, cornered them, and at one point smashed her glasses into pieces.

And you missed the part that he was fined by the BC Human Rights Tribunal (not by a court) for "discrimination" (not for violence).

Guy Earle is a dick but those tribunals are an abomination.

Find your citations here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/offbeat/story/2011/04/21/bc-zestys-comedian-lesbian-insults.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Human_Rights_Tribunal

The price is up to a 100 million now.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/03/29/cv-f35-costs.html

You'd know that there *are* millions of climate refugees.

Start here or here or here ("12 out of 13 'flash' appeals in 2007 related to weather"). Here's 3/4 of a million soon to be refugees in just ONE island nation (now go add up the rest).

Pretty nice writing that snide and ignorant summary from your comfortable suburban basement, wasn't it?

This article clearly demonstrates what's wrong with America's science reporting. If the UN had released a report claiming 50 million global warming refugees by 2010, there would be dozens of news articles on it. The supposed incriminating evidence is a Google Cache page with this map that doesn't itself say anything about refugees, but does highlight areas most susceptible to sea level rise. The "50 million climate refugees by 2010" statement is not referenced anywhere in any UN report, it's a six words on one defunct graphic that was part of a larger report on world agriculture by the UN University. This 50 million by 2010 figure comes from Dr. Bogardi at the UN University in Bonn, NOT the United Nations.

The problem with this prediction being made by any scientist is that keeping track of how many refugees there are is difficult (current estimate by the UN is 1 million a year, a figure that the Red Cross lends support to with the statement that environmental disasters are displacing more people than war now) and the causes are debatable. The epic flooding in Pakistan created 10 million refugees, Hurricane Katrina added a quarter of a million refugees, and desertification in Africa is displacing millions. Can we blame these events on Global Warming? Hurricanes and floods happen without a warming world, but a warming world increases the chances of such disasters happening.

Then there are the refugees that no one realizes. In the small coastal town where I live in North Carolina, houses have been falling into the swamp one by one for decades, but the residents blame it on people building their homes in flood zones, not realizing that sea levels in their state have risen three times the rate of rise on the rest of the Atlantic coast. People didn't build their homes in the water, the water rose 1.5 meters over the 50 years since they were built, but nobody realizes this because of landscape amnesia.

You can read all about the various estimates concerning environmental refugees on Wikipedia. It took the author of this untruth less than an hour to post their nonsense and the deniers flooded the Internet with it quickly. It took me two hours to research and write this response, because I wanted to know what I was talking about, and I will only reach a very small audience in comparison. This is why I despair when considering how science could possibly stand a chance against the overwhelming confidence ignorance brings the unscientific masses.