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According to this pets are now allowed on Air Canada, although many people with allergies object and can no longer fly because of this. But nuts (which don't get carried in the air as much as pet dander) are not allowed?

Am I the only one wondering WTF?

That's simple - they charge you to bring pets, but there's no charge to bring peanuts (yet).

According to this pets are now allowed on Air Canada, although many people with allergies object and can no longer fly because of this. But nuts (which don't get carried in the air as much as pet dander) are not allowed?
Am I the only one wondering WTF?

CBC story about Air Canada having to provide nut-free zones on account of allergies...

...and another CBC story about Air Canada allowing pets in their cabins starting in July. Err...

CBC story about Air Canada having to provide nut-free zones on account of allergies...

...and another CBC story about Air Canada allowing pets in their cabins starting in July. Err...

You assume I'm British.

Well, I'm not. I'm Canadian. And I see the effects of the Queens' decisions (albeit, through a representative) directly.

"But back to those privacy concerns. Some lawyers believe having a young traveller pass through the full-body scanners could violate child pornography laws. As a result, Canada is exempting passengers under-18 from the new measures."

from http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/01/06/f-rfa-common.html

Personally, if I were asked to go through one I would opt for the pat-down instead. Want to get your rocks off feeling my rocks? Go for it, but I won't have my naked image stored in a computer that politicians claim is hack proof and will get deleted right after.

British Columbia has had a carbon tax for a couple of years.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/04/29/bc-gas-prices-carbon-tax.html

Or hell, just having pictures of yourself being happy on facebook

I have a heck of a lot more faith in Canadian airport security than in American airport security! There are some little differences, e.g., we aren't required to take such ridiculous steps as taking our shoes off. But the one biggest difference: our security personnel are calm, collected, and doing their job well.

They sure are - just ask Robert Dziekanski. Oh, wait. You can't:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html

Good thing they were calm and collected about the whole thing.

I'm pretty sure Harper has done more to dismantle transparency in the last 3 years than Chretien/Martin did during their tenure.

Just a sampling of things I can recall off the top of my head since 2006: This, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

And I'll repeat again what I said above: all this (and more that I suspect I've mercifully forgotten over the last 3 years) has taken place under the watch of an autocrat who explicitly ran on the promise of transparency and accountability in the 2006 election.

... and people wonder why the general public thinks politicians are a bunch of assholes ...

I'm pretty sure Harper has done more to dismantle transparency in the last 3 years than Chretien/Martin did during their tenure.

Just a sampling of things I can recall off the top of my head since 2006: This, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

And I'll repeat again what I said above: all this (and more that I suspect I've mercifully forgotten over the last 3 years) has taken place under the watch of an autocrat who explicitly ran on the promise of transparency and accountability in the 2006 election.

... and people wonder why the general public thinks politicians are a bunch of assholes ...

I'm pretty sure Harper has done more to dismantle transparency in the last 3 years than Chretien/Martin did during their tenure.

Just a sampling of things I can recall off the top of my head since 2006: This, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

And I'll repeat again what I said above: all this (and more that I suspect I've mercifully forgotten over the last 3 years) has taken place under the watch of an autocrat who explicitly ran on the promise of transparency and accountability in the 2006 election.

... and people wonder why the general public thinks politicians are a bunch of assholes ...

Maybe you would prefer this?

But it can be done.

(first result on Google)

Satire is protected, that's why you see things like RCM and This hour has 22min. Something most people forget in Canada is our libel/slander/defamation laws are broken into three groups. Those that cause actual harm/character assassination, those that cause danger to public order and everything else. This more or less falls into "everything else" of course it'll probably end up back at the Supreme Court with a new category coming out of it unless parliament comes around and writes a law about it. The chances of that happening are close to nil. Law of force(via courts) work just as well unless something really screws up.

Satire is protected, that's why you see things like RCM and This hour has 22min. Something most people forget in Canada is our libel/slander/defamation laws are broken into three groups. Those that cause actual harm/character assassination, those that cause danger to public order and everything else. This more or less falls into "everything else" of course it'll probably end up back at the Supreme Court with a new category coming out of it unless parliament comes around and writes a law about it. The chances of that happening are close to nil. Law of force(via courts) work just as well unless something really screws up.

A Rogers Wireless customer signed a contract that said "All text messages received are free." But Rogers decided to start charging for those messages and when the customer got the large bill she decided to leave. That's when the fun started.

By the urging of the Canadian government, last year the wireless industry establishing a code of conduct which states that if customers contracts change they should not be forced to accept those changes and they can "terminate the contract without any additional fees for early termination"

But, Rogers told this customer that if she leaves she'll have to pay $20 a month for the remainder of the contract and Rogers "Rogers does not consider its cancellation fee to be a penalty"

Watch the video on this page and Cringe.

... these guys were so great that they even managed to piss off IRAN. Of course they had to slaughter several thousand civilians and a bunch of Iranian diplomats in their own embassy to do it.

Actually, this is typical US-centric ignorance showing, Taliban and Al Qaeda are both derivatives of Wahhabi Sunni Arabic Islam sect, while Iranians are not only Shiites but also Persian, not Arabs. Their language is Farsi, not Arabic. Taliban and Bin Laden were always at war with Iran, they consider Shiites to be "apostates". It is one of the reasons the US chose Saddam as its cat's-paw to attack Iran, he was (at least nominally) a Sunni and held deep contempt of all things Shiite, Iran in particular. Curiously, Saddam and Bin Laden were also at odds, mainly because Bin Laden saw Saddam's Iraq in the way of re-creating his utopian Caliphate, with the Caliph restored to Baghdad in its centre. Needles to say pretty much secular and socialist Saddam would not be welcome in the epicentre of the zealot paradise and Bin Laden had fatwas issued calling for Saddam's head to roll (which makes Dick Cheney's idiotic claims of Saddam - Al Qaeda cooperation truly comical).

Also, the U.S. didn't have to provide proof of Osama's connection, and responsibility, for 9/11 attacks as he did that himself. If you can't trust the words from the horse's mouth then you're a hopeless tinfoil hatter. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html

As I pointed out in another post, should Bin Laden not take credit, some other wacko (and most likely several of them at once) would. Bin Laden's main claim to fame is that the US chose him to be the "Celebrity Evildoer #1" single-handedly responsible for all evils globally, past, present and future. Needless to say this instantly gave him far greater credibility then all the others combined.

It was in the interest of every radical loon to claim that he, and only he, was the "mastermind" of the most famous and successful terrorist foreign strike on the US soil. The instant ego expansion possibilities were just endless on this one for the Jihadists.

I know that it's great when the U.S. is the bad guy,

Actually, no, it is not great. We do not want you to be the "bad guy". In fact we'd rather that the US came to its senses and started to act like its actions were based on the great principles and traditions it always boasts about being at its core. The world would be a much better place for it than with the US as a hypocritical, back-stabbing, duplicitous, greedy, self-centred, arrogant bully it is acting like now.

Wow, that's a lot of anger you're carrying around!

I'd like to address this comment specifically though:

"This is how the Afghanistan mis-adventure is seen by "the other side" and it is of little wonder that the fight will likely go on indefinitely, Taliban having quite a bit (and growing by many accounts) of local support and very able to present itself as the victims of a belligerent, arrogant, foreign, religiously-motivated, supremacist aggressor, victims who will defend their ancestral homeland, their religion and their "way of life" against that aggressor to the bitter end. "

If the peoples of Afghanistan want to continue living an oppressed lifestyle controlled by the most backwards religious zealots on the planet they are WELCOME to do so. All the rest of the world, not just America, asks is that you keep your crazies within your borders.

If this, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban , is really how they want to live then then I feel pity for them. I mean really, these guys were so great that they even managed to piss off IRAN. Of course they had to slaughter several thousand civilians and a bunch of Iranian diplomats in their own embassy to do it.

Also, the U.S. didn't have to provide proof of Osama's connection, and responsibility, for 9/11 attacks as he did that himself. If you can't trust the words from the horse's mouth then you're a hopeless tinfoil hatter. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2004/10/29/binladen_message041029.html

I know that it's great when the U.S. is the bad guy, it's gives people a real sense of satisfaction when we fail, especially when we fail through mistakes of our own doing. We do it enough though that you really needn't go out of your way to make stuff up. Just wait a day or three and we'll provide you with something new to froth about.

Except when they put in the contract that they can change the terms of the contract at any time. Like this women found out when they started charging her for incomming text messages. Sure you can pay $3 a month to resume your normal operation, but I think the time has come to have iron fisted regulation on most of these companies. There is way too much collusion and "industry standards".

Of course the solution is never to ever buy a contract. Personally, i can calmly laugh at all these locked in slaves, but it shouldn't have to be this way!

> Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest
> month on record in Darwin, Australia."

In Canada we're currently experiencing record breaking cold temeratures

If some one wanted to get across undetected, they would go to Calgary, Edmonton, etc. Buy/Rent a off-road vehicle and just drive in across some open fields. It's not hard to figure out.

To be slightly pedantic, depending on where you go, you may not need to go offroad at all:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/10/17/border-crossing.html

(I can't be bothered right now to find actual locations.)

This is a common myth. Police officers are *rarely* killed on the job.

Once is enough to make the rest of them kinda skittish

1
2
3,4,5,6
7
8
9

In less than 10 years, from one police force, in Canada. There have probably been more, but I'm getting depressed searching for them.

This is a common myth. Police officers are *rarely* killed on the job.

Once is enough to make the rest of them kinda skittish

1
2
3,4,5,6
7
8
9

In less than 10 years, from one police force, in Canada. There have probably been more, but I'm getting depressed searching for them.

I don't trust Harper's government further than I can puke

Apparently, about 9m.

Joking aside, I have no love for Harper but if there is anything that I've learnt from the US Bush/Obama fiasco, Ignatieff's government will be just as revolting, possibly more so.
However, I'm afraid that will remain academic.

Did you hear about what happened to Maziar Bahari? The Basij and the Revolutionary Guard are holding the real power in Iran right now, and they've gone completely insane. They thought a Daily Show spoof was real espionage and jailed and tortured a man because of it.

A whole other debate entirely, yes, but I agree.

It would in fact be interesting to directly correlate the quality of the printed word in local papers on a chart of average education level achieved for the region.

Personally I glean a lot of random news from Google News because I use it as a homepage, but most of my heavy reporting comes from the CBC, who do some fantastic journalistic work.

DoD, DIA ect are the areas of the US gov that actually *work*.
They stand on buildings around anti war protesters and film everything they can zoom in on.
They record all car plates in the area too.
If your too bright, articulate, photogenic or charming, they can always stick a cute 20 something on you with more 'direct ideas'.
Your group will then waste years doing useless busy work or be on domestic terrorism charges.
They then just drift back into the protest movements.
Every so often you get a peek of low level police work.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/08/23/police-montebello.html
... "one reason protesters knew the men's true identities was because they were wearing the same boots as other police officers."

TGGWS:

In an official judgement issued on 21 July 2008 the British media regulator Ofcom declared that the final part of the film dealing with the politics of climate change had broken rules on "due impartiality on matters of major political and industrial controversy and major matters relating to current public policy". Ofcom also backed complaints by Sir David King, stating that his views were misrepresented, and Carl Wunsch, on the points that he had been misled as to its intent, and that the impression had been given that he agreed with the programme's position on climate change. Ofcom further ruled that the IPCC had not been given an adequate chance to respond to adverse claims that its work was politicised and that it had made misleading claims about malaria. However, the regulator said that because "the link between human activity and global warming... became settled before March 2007", in parts 1-4 the audience was not "materially misled so as to cause harm or offence".[67] According to Ofcom the program caused no harm because "the discussion about the causes of global warming was to a very great extent settled by the date of broadcast, meaning that climate change was no longer a matter of political controversy[68].

In fact there is a documentary debunking the debunking:

But you are incorrect that they did it for intel, since that is also not possible.

Where's the study or even a valid argument supporting this claim.

Ok. Studies and reports on them:

http://explore.georgetown.edu/news/?ID=20647
http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/519416/
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2009/9/21/21847/9403
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-09/new-study-finds-torture-negatively-affects-memory

And further valid arguments supporting those claims:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30721458/print/1/displaymode/1098/
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/torture-is-more-than-just-harsh-tactics/
http://www.oppapers.com/essays/Dbq-Usefulness-Torture/132993

And at least one example of how this is a slippery slope that leads to nothing good:
  http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/arar/
If nothing else, please Please read about this person!

Do further googles (or wiki searches) for Maher Arar
Then just keep in mind there is NOTHING at all that happened nor will happen that would prevent you or anyone else you know from being in that persons shoes, by a random throw of the dice.

Sure that is an extreme case, but it is cases like that where I can honestly say I would support the usage. If anything, allowing these terrorists to come to a US Court sets a precedent where the usage of information gathered by torture becomes acceptable in a criminal investigation.

That is until they* come into your home at night, haul you and your wife/gf/S.O./whatever away to different prisons in another country and torture you for your terrorists connections for 9 months.
You are doing exactly everything required to qualify as a terrorist suspect under our current methods of determining who is or could be a terrorist, so it is not at all as far fetched as your extreme example is.

[*] They being all of the sociopaths that work their way into positions of power and dominance due to their personality requiring it, whom you are willingly and gladly giving permission to torture anyone and everyone (since that is our current definition of terrorist suspect)

And how are these chemicals affecting animal population ratios?

try this just for openers: Fish adrift

or try http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/doczone/2008/disappearingmale/

Just google around. This phenomenon has been observed for years. Howcum the Danes just woke up?

Wha? This is NEWZ? This theory has been around for more than 10 years.

Here's a report that the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp) put out last year.

This story has also been covered before by a CBC documentary.

I'm currently auditing my cable usage, with an eye to cutting back to what I actually watch. Which isn't much, as it turns out.

I get the local news and Canadian stuff (e.g. Rick Mercer Report) over the air in HD.

I get BBC stuff over the internet with iPlayer.

I get Australian stuff on DVD from my favourite DVD place in Melbourne.

About the only thing I watch on cable is Mythbusters, and I'm sure I could come up with it online if I put my mind to it...

...laura

I meant the rest of the first world. In the rest of the first world, there are zero, I repeat, zero, bankruptcies due to sickness or health care costs.

No bankruptcies =!, does not equal, no complaints.

• "Once upon a time, there were few complaints about lengthy waits for treatment."
• "British Health (Mis)Care: No Complaints Allowed"
• "And service cuts -- such as the closure of a maternity ward near Cuccarolo's home -- are prompting complaints from patients, doctors and nurses that care is being rationed. That concern echos worries among some Americans that the U.S. changes could lead to rationing."

Here's another indication the French system, considered the best in the world by many, is broken: Troubles with the French healthcare system. And that's from someone who advocated the US use France's system as a model.

Falcon

"If the outside surface temperature never drops below freezing, due to above square-cube law... Also it seems no great challenge at all, to design buildings, even domes, that don't collapse under heavy snow loads."

Living in Canada, I know this is not the case. It *shouldn't* be a great challenge, but apparently it is in practice when snowfall is heavy. And these are much smaller domes.

"If the outside surface temperature never drops below freezing, due to above square-cube law... Also it seems no great challenge at all, to design buildings, even domes, that don't collapse under heavy snow loads."

Living in Canada, I know this is not the case. It *shouldn't* be a great challenge, but apparently it is in practice when snowfall is heavy. And these are much smaller domes.

the USA

So does Cuba, does that mean we should follow Cuba's lead?

There are waits for some procedures for stuff that won't kill you. If you have a serious illness you get to see a doctor and whatever specialist is required within hours in most cases.

Canada has no rationing? None at all? Waiting for surgery isn't as bad in Canada? Wait tymes weren't at an all-time high in Canada? Average waiting tymes in Canada for surgery isn't 16 weeks?

Falcon

The "existence of a record" in a database is not the same thing as having a criminal record. That is strictly a data retention policy, for internal usage (administrative purposes). The person who is granted an absolute discharge at the time of their trial does not have a criminal conviction, despite the presence of a notation in the database that they received the discharge. An absolute discharge means that the judge never convicted them, even though they pled guilty. The judge has the absolute right to order that the person not be convicted of a crime when there is no minimum sentence, even if the accused has pled guilty.

Or perhaps you forgot the case where a JUDGE turned out to have had an absolute discharge for an offense when he was a lot younger. It came out years later, and his argument was quite simple - absolute discharge == no criminal conviction, as per the law. It happens all the time. It's not hard to find cases where that happened. It took me less than a minute to find one, and only a few minutes more to cut-n-paste a bunch more.

Here - recent cases: read them and weep.

SAGUENAY, Que. -- The son of former Montreal Canadiens goaltender Patrick Roy received an absolute discharge Wednesday after pleading guilty to an assault charge in connection with a nasty hockey fight last year.

Jonathan Roy, a former goalie for the Quebec Remparts of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League now turned singer, will not have a criminal record. He will have to donate $5,000 to local charitable organizations.

The younger Roy was charged after pounding rival goalie Bobby Nadeau during a hockey brawl in March 2008.

Another case from July of 2009

P.E.I. MLA gets absolute discharge for assault

P.E.I. Progressive Conservative MLA Mike Currie has been given an absolute discharge for assault during a sentencing hearing in Charlottetown on Friday.

Currie, MLA for Georgetown-St. Peter's, said he was relieved by the judge's decision to grant him an absolute discharge, which means he will not have a criminal record.

And Another one, April of 2009

Quebec boy's record cleared despite kirpan conviction

Judge says case has been given too much attention, gives boy unconditional discharge

Jan Ravensbergen, Canwest News Service
Thursday, Apr. 16, 2009

A 13-year-old LaSalle youth involved in Quebec's latest skirmish over the kirpan was declared guilty yesterday in Quebec Youth Court of having threatened two schoolmates with a hairpin normally used to secure his turban.

But Judge Gilles Ouellet then removed the sting from that conviction by handing the youth an absolute discharge -- ensuring the boy remains free of any criminal record.

One form BC in February, 2009

B.C. Supreme Court Madam Justice Marvyn Koenigsberg also found the man at the centre of the ruling, a worker for a marijuana compassion club on Vancouver Island, guilty of producing and possessing for the purpose of trafficking the drug, but gave him an absolute discharge.

Same with an RCMP Officer in Nova Scotia

Truro, N.S. (Canadian Press) - An RCMP officer was granted an absolute discharge today on a fraud charge in Nova Scotia provincial court.

In passing sentence in Truro, Judge Robert Stroud said Ron Lamb has an u

Makers tout exhaust as nutrient, despite critics
http://www.agweek.com/articles/index.cfm?article_id=13745&property_id=41

Recycled tractor exhaust appears to improve farmland: farmer
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/08/28/tractor-emissions.html

Tractor exhaust fertilization system causing dispute
http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/514706.html?nav=5010&showlayout=0

Funny this sounded familiar, I submitted the story about the Canadian farmer three years ago. That article says it was developed by a farmer named Darrel Carlisle and is generally more informative.

Also don't forget you can't smoke while driving a commercial or work vehicle because it's a workplace, and you're not allowed to smoke in workplaces, even if they're your own property and you're the only one there!

I'm not sure if it's an offense to smoke when someone under the age of 16 is in the car or not in Ontario. That is coming here in Manitoba. We also have a handheld device ban coming soon. We're currently in the public awareness phase at the moment, so it's due to become enforceable shortly. A couple weeks ago the cops pulled up beside my buddy and used hand signals to kindly let him know that he should hang up and drive.

It's not a law yet in BC.

here's a wiki list.

# Canada—Only banned in:

        * Newfoundland and Labrador
        * Quebec as of April 1st, 2008
        * Nova Scotia as of April 1st 2008
        * Ontario as of October 26th 2009

...We can only reasonably judge an organization based on the way it behaves in modern times.

You might be interested to have a look at the influence of the American Christian right on Ugandan politics (search within the page for "Jeff Sharlet", and listen to part two of the show). Granted they do not represent all Christians, but there's a pretty clear example of a place where Christianity has had a pretty horrific influence (new law requiring anyone who knows of a homosexual to report them within 24 hours or be themselves guilty of a crime; death penalty for "Aggravated Homosexuality" = being gay and HIV+, never mind the fact that the church's opposition to condom use is responsible for much of the AIDS crisis in that country).

Ban Scientology, makes sense to me, but don't tell me modern Christianity is innocent. There are very large numbers of people who call themselves "Christians" whose capacity for pure-and-simple evil makes the Co$ look like pikers - and they have influence to make it actually happen.

More than half of the 22 battery fires in the cabin of passenger planes since 1999 have been in the last three years.

What is the reader supposed to draw from this? Will we see 4x as many in the next 3 years? 1.5 years?

This is a great example of misusing statistics to imply the wrong conclusions. What's the degree of relevance? Or is that left as an exercise for the reader, to guess if we have twice as many people travelling with electronics or if electronics are more dangerous, or what?

We've seen iphones explode and laptop fires, but when you use scary events like that and then add some sort of implication that the rate is increasing, that's bad reporting in my book. It's why concepts that cannot stand up to scientific scrutiny (intelligent design, anyone?) can gain such momentum: pick and choose statistics that sound relevant enough to convince, yet mean nothing without further data and degree of relevance.

In case you don't remember, lighters and matches are allowed on planes again. Isn't that a more obvious, more common fire hazard?

That quote is not germane to the H1N1 discussion.

The U.S. has ordered around 251 million doses. North of the border, Canada is buying 50 million doses and expects to pay around $400 million dollars before the cost of administering. Assuming $8 per dose, that's 2.4 billion dollars spent from the North American public purse on a manufactured bit of fear-mongering. That's quite the tidy sale. --And the rest of the world is vaccinating against this 'swine flu' as well. Make no mistake; this is a cash-cow bonanza for a small number of companies.

That article you linked to is pure, high-charge emotionalism; as bad as anything you'd see on Fox News. By the time you get to the parts which contain actual data, the reader, (in this case you), are so worked up that you cannot reason your way out of a paper bag.

That's hardly a win for science. --Though it is certainly common enough among people who supposedly promote science.

While I am not a lover of network news in any form, this item is perhaps worth noting. . .

H1N1 Cases Exaggerated? - CBS

In any case, I really don't think it's that people have a problem with vaccines per se, it's that they don't trust the companies making and delivering them. And given the long and much-spotted track record of both the government and the pharmaceutical industry, this is a very reasonable position to take.

It sounds to me as though you're confusing the dream of a perfect world in which medical technologies are used appropriately and responsibly with the real world, which is filled with out-of-control capitalism and reckless disregard for human health and welfare. Geeks seem to have a lot of trouble differentiating between the two, I find.

-FL

If you make an assertion, be prepared to back it up with evidence. It is not my job to make your argument for you.

Thing is, that's a load of shit. I'm one of the ONLY people to back their argument up with facts that can be cited, and frankly, it's a huge waste of time and a rhetorical liability.

Look at this discussion(not necessarily this specific exchange between me and you, but as a whole). People are making unverified claim after unverified claim after unverified claim, and using their unverified, uncited, uncitable claims to support their arguments. Suddenly I've got to research THEIR claims, then I'm finding citations for MY claims, and basically I'm stuck doing everyone's research. How is that fair? Pick one and go with it. Either people google in the first place to back up their claims, or people google after the fact to figure out if something said is true. Right now, I'm doing both because everyone's discussion lacks the slightest rigour.

So the #2 link when you google is from CBC(and cited in the link I gave you)[2]. Blame SEO companies for the poor #1 link.

grr... 2

CITATION NEEDED:
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/09/23/flu-shots-h1n1-seasonal.html

Heres a CBC news report about preliminary data from the Public Health Agency of Canada. No conclusions, but interesting data.

Well, there are certainly rules. Despite these rules, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney ended up collecting $300,000 in envelopes stuffed with cash in secret hotel room meetings as kickbacks while he was in office. We only know this because he got caught.