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There have been reports which say that places like Atlanta are still paying for the olympics.

I was under the impression that Atlanta was one of the success stories of economic growth resulting from hosting an Olympics. This story indicates that there were net economic benefits from hosting the Olympics, but you are generally right, the economic benefits from hosting the Olympics are questionable in general. As others have mentioned, Montreal only recently finished paying off the Olympic stadium they constructed for the 1976 games. The Birds Nest stadium that the Chinese were so proud of is scheduled to host 1 event in 2009, but using Beijing as an example is dubious since it seemed clear from the beginning that the Chinese intended to host a hugely wasteful Olympics for ego purposes.

Passing the border using other methods to get into the US from Canada is more difficult now. AFAIK from media articles, the Great Lakes are now patrolled by US Coast Guards with .50 cal guns on board. And if you choose to walk across the boarder, there are apparently drone planes monitoring the border. I don't think these are equipped with Hellfire missiles (yet?) as their cousins in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I'd just like to see some resemblance of security on buses and trains. Buses certainly never check for guns or sharp pointy things. Some nutjob a few years back decapitated - yes cut the head off of the passenger sitting next to him. Why? We don't know except he's a nutjob. He's in a nuthouse now. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/31/greyhound-transcanada.html

Exactly. Cities like Toronto have had great success with lowering and in some cases eliminating homework for students. I don't think homework should really be all that necessary for students to learn the material they do. They spend quite a bit of time in school, if you can't teach them the skills in that amount of time, homework probably won't add a lot to the understanding.

In case some haven't heard of it, Montreal cops were caught red-handed doing exactly that.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/montreal/story/2007/08/23/police-montebello.html

There's actually video of this happening in Canada. Several masked "demonstrators" got identified as cops by real demonstrators, and eventually went through police lines to escape being unmasked.

The video is online at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1-WTc1kow, and you can get more details here: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2007/08/22/ot-police-070822.html - the old guy in the video who tries to get their masks off is a union leader.

This is treason, pure and simple. Any government agent who behaves in this way is knowingly betraying their country, along with any superior officer with knowledge that this is happening.

It is a more significant crime than murder.

Edmonton has its share of loons, too.

Oh, absolutely. It's more about loons per capita, though.;)

Edmonton has its share of loons, too.

Just posted a couple days ago on the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/newfoundland-labrador/story/2009/09/10/nl-bell-twoonie-fee-910.html $2 for paper bills. We could fight it I guess, but no one will, and it's not like it'd do anything anyway :(

Yeah, because no other country ever uses TASERs. It's only the evil Americans that do that.

I know this is offtopic (somewhat) so I won't mind if it's moderated out of usefulness, but I'll get on my soapbox at this point.

A taser should only ever be used as an alternative to shooting somebody. If you wouldn't shoot them in the same situation, you shouldn't taser them.

Resisting arrest alone should not mean tasering is on the table, even with a difficult struggle. Law enforcement is getting way to used to tasering simply to avoid any kind of physical confrontation.

If tasers didn't have the lethality question hanging over them I would think differently, but according to Amnesty International, at least, 334 people died after taser shocks between 2001 and 2008.

Good timing :

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/toronto/story/2009/09/01/toronto-cyclist-collision-death481.html

Yes, we have our share of dirty rotten self-righteous political fuckwits. They're mostly concentrated in Ontario and Alberta... As to why, well I'm afraid that's up to speculation.

Source please?

Here you go: http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2008/01/03/drugs.htm

It's actually a ratio of twice as much spent on research than development, rather than three times, but I would still say the original poster is correct in principal. But then again, as you point out, this about the US. YCRMV (Your Country's Results May Vary).

The reason there is income tax is folks ask the government to do more than it did in the past.

Please consider size of the U.S. Military in 1920.
http://www.answers.com/topic/u-s-army-1900-41
120,000 men. Today... around 3 million people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_armed_forces

People over 65 in the 20's were SOL. If you got rid of social security and Medicare and medicaid, you could cut your taxes in half. Include the military, and
the above covers 80% of the federal budget. So cut the military 90%, and eliminate the other two, and you'll be back to the good old 20's. Good luck getting elected on that platform...

One of the biggest reasons not to live in the US is healthcare. My government monopoly (in Canada) lets me go to any doctor I want. and we pay less than half, per capita, what Americans spend on health care, which means that those with coverage are likely spending three times as much or more. Yet Canadians live longer... maybe it's just that the poor Americans are dying like flies, bringing the average down... you're going to try to spin that into a positive, aren't you?

Americans have health care that is great when you are not sick, which like a roof that doesn't leak when it isn't raining. I think many of those who have health insurance will get surprised if they ever actually have the audacity to fall seriously ill.

Why are you spending so much money, for so little care? Maybe because there are no competitive incentives to control costs. The higher the premiums are, the higher the justifiable management costs.
The only reason to reduce costs in the US system is to improve the profit margin, but one can do the same by just raising the price, which has the added benefit of helping the HMO too, so it's pretty moot.

The market doesn't work, if only healthy people can shop for health insurance. You cannot test drive it, you're basically buying on reputation, and how they take care of your minor issues and checkups while you are healthy.

Once you are sick, you can be very sure that you cannot change providers. You can be very sure that they are looking for reasons to unload you, that you are at higher risk of being fired because the health insurance provider squeezes your employer. Insurance companies naturally seek to cover the least risk for the highest price.

There is no free market when you are sick in a private system, Your insurance provider, at the time you fall ill is essentially the only game in town. Can you say Monopoly? knew you could! When there is public health care (ie. a public system to pay private doctors to provide services (which is how it works in Canada)) The patient can change doctors at any point, even after they are sick, get a second or third opinion any time they want, and do not have to worry about losing their job.

In public health insurance, risk is just removed as an economic factor, and is distributed over the entire population. People pay a flat rate for health care.
The doctors are still private, The hospitals can be as well. The fees are standardized, so the doctors compete on cost reduction (to maximize their profits.)
Since the fees are negotiated by the government in bulk, everyone benefits from wholesale-style pricing. That's a big reason why drugs in Canada cost a fraction of what they do in the US.

But you know, just keep on keeping on, because it's better for us. Canadian labour costs are lower (for example in the auto industry) because the health insurance premiums for employees are 1/4 what they are in the US, including for the large number or retirees. That's one big reason why plants are closing in the US and relocating... to Canada...
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/08/28/toyota-corolla-cambridge592.html

From a human pers

Ruminant depression is a different order of magnitude from end-of-universe major depression. Which do they mean?

Sherwin Nuland on electroshock therapy

At the other end of the spectrum, it's just a mood disorder (and working title of Annie Hall).

Anhedonia

Years ago I read an article about stress and the immune system. The claim was that under stress, the immune cells leave the blood stream and enter into the skin cells. Hence the collapse of immune levels in the blood stream. Stress is often associated with physical confrontation. Perhaps under this circumstance the body is more concerning about fighting off infection from skin trauma than whether the last meal was a mite tainted, or some child has picked up a sneeze.

I haven't seen this followed up, but does it really make sense that body's response to stress is to shut down the immune system? Never to me, it didn't.

Another great one is the doctors instructing you that "whatever your itch system conveys, ignore it".

'Itchy' neurons tell mice when to scratch

So we have an entire nervous subsystem devoted to itch, and our only response is to not listen?

I read an article that the appendix is now believed to act as a pocket of gut bacteria to restart the gut after a core dump.

And then there was the whole thing about "junk DNA" where junk is apparently a scientific word meaning "you can't write a successful grant to study this". From another perspective, at the original sequencing cost of $1 per base pair, I can feel their pain.

I get mighty tired of the scientific meme "functionless until proved grantable". Were the scientists originally responsible for this, or the surgeons?

How many doctors does it take to change a light bulb? Three, but while they're at it, they'll change the socket too.

There's a trial here in Toronto with a similar technology. Automated delivery of prescriptions moves a step closer in Ontario

Fix 1: we don't yet know reliable and safe ways to transplant genes using viruses.

Well, except for the test subjects that had a genetic disorder which caused cells in their retinas to have such reduced light sensitivity as to render them blind. Several times has conditions such as this been treated using gene replacement treatment with levels of success ranging from being able to discern motion to reading, all within the first few weeks of the treatment. I don't remember the original article, so I'm just going to link to a random one that seems to talk about the same general thing: Gene therapy restores vision in nearly blind patients

Fix 2: way worse than the disease for most of people.

A much more sane variant of Fix 2 is transplantation of islet cells, grown from patient's own stem cells. I'm sure one day it'll be there.

Quite an arrogant thing for you to say (assuming that you, for the sake of validity of your argument, would have told us if you actually have diabetes). I would accept, without a single moments hesitation, having my immune system shut down, having bone marrow and (later) a new pancreas transplanted and living in a bubble for a couple of years. It boils down to this: no treatment, 60 years of drawing blood and injecting insulin several times a day and still you die from complications (assuming you don't get cancer or get hit by a car or something). Or! Go through a very, very uncomfortable

Ok, I might be a bit overly dramatic there. If I go on a no-carb diet and measure my blood glucose 5 times a day I might avoid any complications until I reach 70, at which point I will likely have loads of other shit to worry about. Still, there isn't even a questing of whether I'd do it or not but rather "Would it work?" and if so "How/where do I get it done? Can you start tomorrow? Later today?".

Read up. If transplanting islet cells worked, transplanting whole pancreases would work as well. Aside from the problems associated with other organ transplants (finding a donor the body won't immediately reject), there is the slight problem that a diabetics body will attack any insulin producing cells no matter who's stem cells they are grown from. Giving a type 1 diabetic an organ/islet transplant is like refilling a blown tire. Until you patch up the tire (gene replacement) or get a new one (bone marrow transplant), you will achieve nothing by refilling it past perhaps getting out of the gas station parking lot.

Yeah, because nobody would ever take advantage of a public-initiated referendum process.

Maybe if you upped the percentage to 10% or more.

This contradicts the results published by Dr. Daniele Piomelli at UC Irvine, who found that eating fatty foods can improve long-term memory. Perhaps there is a difference between short-term and long-term memory formation, or a difference in methodology. In any case, the results of medical studies are rarely as simple as they initially appear. (First they said that cholesterol was bad for you, then they said that some cholesterol is good. First they said that being overweight is bad, but now they realize that losing weight isn't necessarily better for your overall health.)

Check out this disturbing CBC video short documentary on how these people dismantle computers in the most unhealthy way. Both to themselves and their environment.

http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/environmentscience/ewaste_dumping_ground.html

"Certainly, the eugenistic and racial ideologies that in the past humiliated man and provoked immense suffering are not being proposed again, but a new mentality is creeping in that tends to justify a different consideration of life and personal dignity . . . The tendency, therefore, is to give precedence to the active faculties, to proficiency, to physical perfection and beauty, to the detriment of other dimensions of existence that are not thought to matter. This weakens the respect that is due to every human being, even in the presence of a developmental defect or a genetic illness that could be manifested at some point in his life . . "

Or even if you're just not genetically "perfect," you misshapen worthless drags on society's productivity.

-- Pope Benedict XVI, with regards to human dignity in the face of genetic enhancement technology
(cue the kneejerk ad-hominem anti-Catholic/papal tangent.... again...)

The CBC has run several stories. For example, "Copyright rules must protect innovation, groups say" including several others linked therein.
They also ran an excellent summary of the wishes of major interested parties

The CBC has run several stories. For example, "Copyright rules must protect innovation, groups say" including several others linked therein.
They also ran an excellent summary of the wishes of major interested parties

It's all about who has the latest phone, with the most non-phone-related capabilities, and therefore people are willing to pay the high prices for the service and 15 cents for 120 bytes of data.

Actually many are not willing to pay that price. The US has a very low cellphone adoption rate by international standards (graphic from this article - you'll find us right next to Turkey). What this shows is that many Americans are voting with their feet. But apparently the cellphone companies still think they are more profitable by gouging the smaller subscriber base even more. I am part of this statistic. I first had a cellphone in 1996, but quit about 10 years ago. In that time, I don't think costs have come down at all. And texting just keeps getting more and more expensive for no apparent reason. It stinks, because my kids are becoming preteens and I can tell it will be very hard to hold out against having cellphones like regular people in a few more years, but I just hate the companies and their rates.

Reminds me of broadband, actually; one day about 10 years ago I took a leap forward from dialup to cable Internet, but costs haven't dropped and speeds haven't increased by one iota in the subsequent decade. Folks, the AT&T breakup unleashed a tsunami of cost savings in long-distance, and innovation in telephony. It's time we did that again.

It's all about who has the latest phone, with the most non-phone-related capabilities, and therefore people are willing to pay the high prices for the service and 15 cents for 120 bytes of data.

Actually many are not willing to pay that price. The US has a very low cellphone adoption rate by international standards (graphic from this article - you'll find us right next to Turkey). What this shows is that many Americans are voting with their feet. But apparently the cellphone companies still think they are more profitable by gouging the smaller subscriber base even more. I am part of this statistic. I first had a cellphone in 1996, but quit about 10 years ago. In that time, I don't think costs have come down at all. And texting just keeps getting more and more expensive for no apparent reason. It stinks, because my kids are becoming preteens and I can tell it will be very hard to hold out against having cellphones like regular people in a few more years, but I just hate the companies and their rates.

Reminds me of broadband, actually; one day about 10 years ago I took a leap forward from dialup to cable Internet, but costs haven't dropped and speeds haven't increased by one iota in the subsequent decade. Folks, the AT&T breakup unleashed a tsunami of cost savings in long-distance, and innovation in telephony. It's time we did that again.

I agree, but only to the extent that you're describing the media-whoring environmentalist factions to which the Western Anglosphere is popularly exposed. For example, the International Institute for Sustainable Development addresses the same China/e-waste problem (http://www.iisd.org/trade/china/markets_research.asp) that Greenpeace does, but IISD provides substantial and achievable recommendations which are not reducible to simply stop, and have street cred among international organizations and businesses. Even Greenpeace officials based in China are clueful of the fact that science is stronger than whining (e.g. see http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/video/environmentscience/ewaste_dumping_ground.html).

It may be that we simply get more of the rage-based advocacy because that's the market created by the popularity of our adversarial style of infotainment.

An Apple a day keeps allergy doctors busy?

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2006/05/03/fruit-allergy060503.html

All you have to do is pick the right person and you can greatly reduce the number of neurons you'll need to model.

Your movie theater will burn to the ground when it catches fire because the FD will not enter a building where there are known radio problems.

They actually didn't do that during 9/11. They went in knowing that they had radio problems.

That being said in Canada, there seems to be some firefighters who refuse to go on calls due to safety concerns. To save you on reading, here is a comment from a fireman's wife responding to the story. Her response is quite sensible actually -- see the part which I emphasized below in bold:

I think what people are missing is that these firefighters who have excercised their rights are doing nothing out of the ordinary. This is a right that can and is excercised by any worker who feels they are being exposed to an unsafe work environment. Would you want your loved one going off to a job where the employer did not provide adequate protection against injury.

The HRM Fire Service is the employer here. They are obligated to ensure the safety of their workers, and they feel that they have done this by issuing a new policy that states that 4 firefighters must be on scene before they enter a fire.

However, what the Union and the Firefighters are saying, is that by having to wait for multiple vehicles to respond in order to have the 4 person compliment in order to enter a fire, they are unable to perform their job. Their job being the protection of the lives and property of residents of the HRM. The delays in being able to enter the fire will potentially cost lives and untold dollars in damages.

One other thing. I know that my husband, sister and all other firefighters I know would be unable to standby and watch a structure burn with anyone inside while waiting for the required # of firefighters to arrive before they can begin a rescue effort. However, according to the HRM policy, if they do not abide by the policy and begin the rescue effort before they have the required 4 FF, then they can be disciplined with loss of wages or loss of job. And, God forbid, if they were to lose their life - their life insurance would be void. All for doing their job, a job that all firefighters do willingly and with pride.

This is about safety. Safety of all Firefighters and the residents of the HRM. Period.

There are a growing number of private clinics in Canada. For those with the means, you cans stay AND pay if you choose.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/healthcare/public_vs_private.html

I call bullshit. Here's one: http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00042081 Prevention of Autogenous Vein Graft Failure in Coronary Artery Bypass Procedures

This study -- which was actually of a drug used to treat tissue before transplantation, rather than of a surgical technique -- found that "Failure of at least 1 vein graft is quite common within 12 to 18 months after CABG surgery. Edifoligide is no more effective than placebo in preventing these events. Longer-term follow-up and additional research are needed to determine whether edifoligide has delayed beneficial effects, to understand the mechanisms and clinical consequences of vein graft failure, and to improve the durability of CABG surgery."

I was excited that you might have found a surgical technique that meets the placebo-controlled blinded test standard, now I'm disappointed. You really ought to read a study's findings before you cite it.

Try Googling randomized controlled trial surgery

Following your link I find studies where the "control" is drug therapy or another medical intervention. If you have one where surgery is compared versus a sham procedure, please, point it out to me -- perhaps there's one mentioned in a study behind a paywall.

It's no good to have a study find that "surgery X is better than drug Y" -- maybe the benefits were due to a few days of enforced rest, skilled nursing care, and hospital food, not to mention that nebulous "placebo effect", or even a side-effect of general anesthesia, rather than due to the actual cutting and sewing of flesh.

The term surgeons use is not "placebo" but "sham surgery".

Sham surgery is a form of placebo.

It may be OK to thread a catheter into somebody's coronary arteries and squirt saline, but nobody is going to ask a patient to undergo abdominal or chest surgery, with a mortality of 1% or even 0.1%, just to satisfy somebody's idea of a perfect scientific design.

But sham thoracic and cranial surgery has been performed. The first, and most famous, use of a placebo surgical technique as a control was to investigate mammary artery ligation for relief of angina pectoris. And tests of transplantation of human embryonic dopamine neurons and of fetal pig cells into the brains Parkinson's patients, were also compared to sham techniques. In all three of these cases, the "real" operation was no more effective than the placebo.

We can add to that a test of arthroscopic surgery for knee arthritis which failed to show any benefit of a real surgery over a fake cut.

So again, I ask: if anyone has an example of a placebo-controlled trail of a surgical technique where the real technique proved more effective that the placebo, please post it.

1-sentence course in medical ethics: A doctor can't do anything to a patient that wouldn't benefit the patient.

The fact that it's difficult to te

Of course when we all have to go to Government run health care like Canada, we will have to wait in line for 3months for wound treatment and instead of nano-diamonds, we will have to make do with cubic zirconium dust covered in aspirin.

Somehow I doubt that the world's third largest producer of diamonds would have any trouble with that, even if it were a real issue.

DETROIT - General Motors Corp. lost $6 billion in the first quarter and its revenue was cut nearly in half as car buyers feared the wounded auto giant would enter bankruptcy and no longer honor its warranties.

The Detroit-based company also said it spent $10.2 billion more cash than it took in from January through March, mainly because revenue dropped by a staggering $20 billion, or 47 percent.

Toyota, on the other hand, lost 4.4 billion for the entire YEAR.

That's some kool-aid you're drinking :-)

The appendix serves a useful function in humans, though that function is probably different than its original function in our ancestors. This is not to say that it is essential anymore as it was when our diets were much different.

Yes, you're right. While this isn't definitive proof, most of the people getting killed in the BC gang wars are causasian: http://www.cbc.ca/bc/features/homicide/2009.html.

Though I can't find more sources right now, I've read numerous reports on the homicides in the past few years are from feuding caucasian gangs killing each other. The asian gangs seem to get along with each other more cordially. The only exception are those in the multi-ethnic "UN" gang.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2009/07/22/bc-barwatch-violates-privacy-laws.html

They want to scan in driver's licenses and then share the info among all downtown bars so that if you piss off a bouncer at one bar (are you hitting on his girlfriend?), you can get yourself banned from ALL bars
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/04/22/cgy-alberta-clubs-bars-info-id.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/04/28/cgy-bar-watch-safety-security-cameras.html

They want to scan in driver's licenses and then share the info among all downtown bars so that if you piss off a bouncer at one bar (are you hitting on his girlfriend?), you can get yourself banned from ALL bars
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/04/22/cgy-alberta-clubs-bars-info-id.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2009/04/28/cgy-bar-watch-safety-security-cameras.html

Don't get too excited just yet. Just because they're soliciting feedback doesn't mean they'll listen to it.

Exactly. They are doing this because bill C-61 was heavily critisiced for not soliciting public opinon. But it's already clear they have no intention to listen. Monday's "Public Copyright Forum" in Vancouver was announced the Thursday before - giving 4 days notice. It was also announced on twitter(?!?!).

They then spontaneously changed the time from 12:45 to 11:00 or something like that. It was over when I showed up.

You do realize that there are Tim Horton's in Times Square, NY.... right? So it's too late already.. :)

Should we falter, even for a second, they will over run us with their strange brews and Tim Hortons.

You're too late. Canadian forces have already invaded New York City.

The CBC did a documentary called "Getting Gouged by Geeks" of precisely the same thing, with almost precisely the same fault - Instead of loosening the chip, the module itself was blown in such a way that the computer didn't power on. Unfortunately, CBC had high standards - even one guy who had figured it out, and honestly fixed it, was considered to be "gouging" because he only had a larger module than what needed replacing - Let's not even mention that they expected him to do a house call for free and give them a memory module for the going price online. There were plenty of examples of others who weren't so legit, though.

You can see it here. Interestingly, Slashdot ran a story on it.

As a matter of fact it was just invoked in the Supreme Court and clearly incriminating evidence was thrown out.

Disable gravity for 105 days, then walk out of the experiment.
THAT will impress me.

Humans lose muscle very quickly without gravity even if they exercise 2+ hours a day. Walking after 2 weeks is difficult. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/09/22/astronaut-collapse.html To be clear, these people are fitter than most. The other astronauts were FEELING gravity just as much. Studies show over 30% muscle loss after a few months in micro-gravity.

There is one in Canada, not with shock therapy, but with cult like tactics that came from the united states. I'm American and I have nothing against the US, but the whole "addiction treatment for teens" trend originated and became popular in the US. It stands to reason most of the programs are US based. Sure there have been thousands of documented instances of severe abuse and even death but for the most part the state does nothing because it's seen as somehow a "necessary evil". I don't doubt that it can happen in China, not specifically because I have any direct evidence, but because I believe the eyewitness accounts to be both credible and plausible in light of what has happened in the US.

You're welcome

If you drunk dive and kill someone with your car you should get 24 days in jail.

Unless you happen to be a cop.

that is like complaining that phones or the web are overrated and pointless because most of the content is of no interest to you.

I disagree. It would be more like complaining that the 5-second time limit for phone calls, or the 140-byte limit for web pages is pointless... except that these limits don't exist.

You don't have to read those posts you know!

But you do have to wade through them if you're trying to find something interesting - which is the exact problem with Twitter.

Here's a rundown on why (and virtually everybody I've ever met) dislikes twitter:

Prelude: Traditional publishing relies on publishers and editors deciding what everyone should read. They take massive amounts of information, and strip out the crap (as they see it.) Blogging changes that - there are no publishers, we rely on other methods (reputation, moderation, etc) to filter the crap from the good stuff. (Clay Shirkey touches on that here, among other things, if you want a great read. :)

I've tried twitter a couple of times, but keep getting turned off by one simple thing: There doesn't appear to be any filtering mechanism. Everyone I've talked to about it says the same thing.

When I've met (online or off) someone interesting enough to want to follow their twitter feed, I went to their page, looking for a stream of what they've posted recently (maybe the last few days or weeks.) Instead, I'm greeted by one post from them, followed by masses of "replies" from people I don't know, saying things I really don't care about. I went to Twitter to find something, and Twitter makes it impossible to find it.

When I describe this to people I've met, they agree that this is why they don't use it - there's too much crap they don't want, and it's impossible (not just very difficult - actually impossible) to find what you do want.

Now, maybe it's just because I'm Canadian, but maybe not.

following the odd celebrity like the mythbusters is interesting.

Well, it might be, if there wasn't so much crap from other people on that page.

Obviously I have way too much music or not enough free time - I didn't know last.fm had become non-free. This is what I get for still using Amarok 1.4 I suppose.

Personally, I suscribe to a number of Podcasts, including a number of CBC (www.cbc.ca) ones as well as TVO's 'Search Engine' (www.tvo.org). As well, CBC has concerts on demand at http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/

I also second using Archive.org as a resource, although I find their search engine for music lacking. I haven't used legaltorrents yet, but I soon will!

Can't we just have a referendum to get the party leader change their first name to Doris?

The link given in the summary is a horrible article. IT was actually Canadian Journalism students, and they were working on a story about ewaste. It wasn't just some random country, they were following leads from North america. Better links are at the register and at the CBC.