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Did you not know that all us canuks are crazy? Its a known fact. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/07/31/greyhound-transcanada.html

The Fifth Estate did a fantastic news piece on this. http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2008-2009/head_games/video.html/

Living in South America is not as bad as they want you to believe (except for .ve 'cause their president is nuts).

By that logic living in Peru is hell, let's see. Current president: Well known corrupt:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5047896.stm

Former President: Well known fraudster: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2005/05/04/peru-050504.html.

Previous to Toledo you had: Fujimori and Montensinos. Do I need to say more?

Look, you are entitled to have your opinion about Chavez and trash him in all the forums you want. But to insult an entire country because YOU dislike its government is extremely retarded, specially considering that Venezuela excels Peru in almost every socioeconomical measure (HDI , GDP, life expectation, educational index and so on). Venezuela received thousands of Peruvian immigrants who went there to work for a better life and contribute to the economy and I think they would be highly pissed by such a inane commentary.

Oh it gets worse then that. Companies are selling health insurance to private individuals in Canada. That's right, in the same country that refuses to allow you to pay for your own health care, people are purchasing health insurance policies because they aren't getting the treatment they deserve.

But to add to the list of things wrong. In some European countries, the governments are Euthanizing it's seniors by denying them life saving treatments after a certain age. This practice extended to some severely injured young people but it recently started getting bad publicity in the UK and they are stopping it. Then there is the 50k limit. It seems if a life saving procedure costs more then 50k, you simply will not get it at all. Now this isn't the cost-effectiveness analysis where they attempt to determine if your life is worth saving or not, it's just the cut off line where you won't get the treatment. And at least in the UK, apparently if you go around them on that 50k limit or bypass their denial from the cost analysis, you lose your government medical rights altogether.

Most people have some glory minded image of government health care. It's probably engraved into their minds by activists like Michael Moore and their mockumentories. But evidently, it isn't what it seems.

Canada does have guns. They don't have school shootings.

Here in Australia we don't have guns (it's neigh impossible to get anything at all these days, believe me I have tried). Per capita, we've had a shitload of people going on killing sprees with guns.

What's this correlation I'm supposed to see? That gaining your independence from England makes you more likely to be a psychopath? Interesting.

There was a rather famous one at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal 20 years ago... (rather sad, too, since the gunman targeted only women - in engineering, nonetheless) http://archives.cbc.ca/society/crime_justice/topics/398/

And enough reports of kids bringing guns to school to have lock downs here in BC.

So yes, Canada does have school shootings, and while the murder rate is small compared to the US, it has taken large leaps lately. Most of the guns come from the US - though there were some cases where the guns were all legally registered, too.

Maybe what Canada doesn't have is a super gun-crazy culture - it's the right that's missing from the Charter...

My (well, not mine really, as I can't vote) Prime Minister reads manga and his ex-Defense Minister builds plastic models of battleships and fighter planes, but they are far, far, far from *AWESOME*!

Actually, all computer parts and electronics sellers are abusive, to some degree, in my experience. The problem was just that Circuit City was worse that others. My experience of them was that no one who worked there had any technical knowledge.

CompUSA was worse than Circuit City in my experience. (That's pronounced com-POOZ-a to show the proper low respect.) The predictable happened. The title of that article is: "CompUSA closes shop".

Incredible Universe had a unique formula. They abused their sales people; I was told that and observed that. The predictable happened: Incredible Universe crashes to earth. Actually it crashed to under the earth.

I remember Future Shop in the U.S. as being a confused place. The predictable happened in 1999: Future Shop closing U.S. stores.

Most of the problem with computer retail stores is the same as with any technology company: There are managers who think they can run a technology company without actually understanding their products.

Does anyone know of an online computer and electronics equipment seller that is not abusive?

They are staying open. They are run by an subsidiary that has already filed for creditor protection in Canada. However they said that holiday sales were strong. They are not part of the US liquidation.

...travels through RIM(TM)'s central server in Canada

Canada, eh? That's one of those unstable, oil-rich nations run by a fundamentalist dictator, that supports all kinds of terror, right?

Wanting to visit and spend my dollars in your country is not a crime I'm afraid - I'll go visit Canada instead.

Hope your trip to Canada ends better than Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski's.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/11/14/bc-taservideo.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IJqdL40lvU

Stick a fork in Nortel, they're done:

Nortel Networks Corp. watchers are keeping an eye on the struggling telecom technology company this week, as it is due to make millions in interest payments that could force it to file for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the U.S.

About $100 million worth of interest is due Thursday on debt issued as company bonds, a Nortel source has told CBC News. That has led to speculation that the company, which is headquartered in Toronto and is still Ottawa's largest private-sector employer, will find it can't make the payments and seek protection from creditors.

Toronto? Good Transportation System? Sorry but I must disagree. I'll assume that you haven't sardined yourself onto a TTC rush hour bus lately. These days, I call it "The Bitter Way".
What good transportation system runs out of monthly passes in the first week of the month?

Numerous companies either breach the policies or work around them.

Tthere was a big flap last year when the parent company of Winners and Home Sense was found to have been capturing all their customer's credit card numbers, which are supposed to be passed directly the the banks' clearing house without ever being seen by the retailer. See http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/01/18/winnersbreach.html

Yes, they got stolen (;-))

--dave

"Kohlmann outlined Operation Praline, a sting operation in the U.K. that ultimately uncovered a would-be terrorist network in three countries led by Aabid Khan, a then-19-year-old Briton"

"Evan Kohlmann, a U.S. terrorism analyst who advised the prosecution at Khan's trial, said" ..

"Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were reported to the police by their own university and detained for six days last May. Sabir had been studying extremism and had asked Yezza to print out a document for him."

--
PROTHERO
Do you believe this crap, Dascombe?

DASCOMBE
It's not our job to believe it,
Lewis. Our job is to tell the
people --

It's interesting that the submitter didn't think that the radio show that aired the story was worth mentioning. (Weekend Edition Sunday, which I used to listen to a lot before the podcast glut took over my headphones.) Apparently NPR now has a lot of listeners who only know them through their podcasts.

That's beginning to include me, even though I've been listening to NPR since most of you were still in grade school. I used to be fanatical about their content. They seemed to cater to people with more intelligence and longer attention spans than a lot of competing media. But now, public radio networks in Australia, Canada, and the UK have gotten into podcasting in a big way, and their product actually makes NPR look just a little lame. The Aussies in particular excel at science reporting and serious audio documentaries, two kinds of reporting that NPR doesn't really care for.

Qualification: NPR does have some good science reporters, but they rarely get enough air time to cover anything in depth. And they also have some really bad ones.

I'd probably listen to more NPR podcasts if they had more. They've strongly resisted podcasting complete shows, afraid of antagonizing the member stations who pay the bills. Of the shows I listen to, only Fresh Air offers a complete podcast, and that one is not carefully edited for online consumption, and material is often missing. (Some of this may be for copyright reasons, but I think it's mostly sloppiness.)

What podcasts they do offer are mostly except shows, like the Shuffle Podcast. They do have an interesting new feature that allows you to mix your own keyword-driven podcast.

OK. So women get breast cancer. It's invariably after the "breeding age". And what women are we talking about? "White Western women"?
  What about the guys with Prostate cancer?
  Nevertheless, they are all small potatoes (no pun intended).
Listen- Hasn't anyone (in America) woken up yet?

What's your view on the future of the "human" race?
Haven't you heard about the emasculating plastics?
"Plastics are the future, Ben!"
"OK! Gee, thanx, Mr. Robinson"

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This [original "peak oil" theory, or "Hubbert's peak"] does not mean that the world is running out of oil: it means that we are running out of the cheap pumpable oil that has fueled the economic development of the 20th Century.

The global oil production curve is simply a composite of the contributions of individual nations. However, different countries are in varying stages of production. Some peaked long ago (the USA peaked in 1970 -an event predicted by Dr. Hubbert in 1956), some will peak very soon (the UK in 1999), and some are a long way away from peaking - see graph below. These latter countries will soon find themselves supplying an ever increasing proportion of the world's oil needs as we pass the global Hubbert Peak.

They are of course the major Middle East producers, the largest of them being Saudi Arabia. Their share of the world oil market will probably exceed 30% in 1999. The last time this happened, in 1973, it allowed them to trigger a world oil crisis. In contrast with 1973, the changes in 1999 will be permanent, as they will be based on resource constraints as opposed to politics.

This interesting story covers the non-windows based subs Canada purchased from the brits. Apparently, those also have glitches...

Windsor's downright freakish string of glitches will continue apparently to the end. Today, the radar mast that had filled earlier with sea water is now actually dripping into the sub's control room, the boat's nerve centre. To cope, the crew has rigged up a homemade anti-leak contraption using plastic hosing, a water bottle and duct tape.

We pay for the CBC television station with our taxes as well. CBC has even begun hosting their own streaming and downloadable repeats on their website, like with the awesome and hilarious TV adaptation of Douglas Coupland's jPod.

Jesse Brown (of the Search Engine Podcast) did a great job talking about this type of thing. http://www.cbc.ca/searchengine/blog/2008/11/podcast_12_is_up.html And this just adds to it.

So Australia, you voted in a Labour government, thinking you were going to get a moderate, left of centre government? A change from the Neo-Liberal (see Thatcher and Reagan) fiscal policies of the right.

But what you got is a bunch of socially right-wing, authoritarian cock-wads, who think the solution to any social problem is making new laws. As a Brit, I have to say this sounds disturbingly familiar.

If it's not Stephane Dion declaring that he's "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime," Australians electing a Tony Blair clone, or the Canadian Prime Minister ripping-off speeches from John Howard; it continues to amaze me how the Commonwealth leaders copy each other.

Not sure why you got modded down as a troll. You correctly quoted the Carlton U student association's motion to support a charity that benefitted "their diverse communities." It even made the news sites down here in New Zealand. Here's the text of the motion, directly from the CBC:

Motion to drop Shinerama fundraising campaign from Orientation Week

Whereas Orientation week strives to be inclusive as possible

Whereas all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their diverse communities

And whereas cystic fibrosis has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men

Be it further resolved that: The CUSA representatives on the incoming Orientation Supervisory Board work to select a new broad reaching charity for orientation week.

Source: CUSA

They've already realized what a huge mess they've made and are working at rectifying the situation. Thanks for keeping up on the latest news on the issue.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/11/26/ot-081126-shinerama.html

An American fighter pilot is out flying around Afghanistan. He sees some light flashes on the ground. 'Base, this is fighterguy. I see shots on the ground, request permission to engage.'

'Ah, that's a negative, fighterguy, we show friendlies in the area.'

'Negative base, these are not friendlies. Engaging.'

'Ah, fighterguy, do not repeat NOT engage, there are friendlies in the area.'

'Base, fighterguy, bombs away!'

And four Canadian servicemen were killed The algorithm would have said 'no shoot.' They're dead because he was human.

This week's Quirks and Quarks http://www.cbc.ca/quirks has a feature on several different theories of abiogenesis, from ideas of life beginning around geothermal vents to hypotheses about life beginning in ice.

On a smaller level, societies where people own guns are usually more peaceful ones. Why? Because people can see them. Just the threat of being shot is enough to deter people from starting shit.

[citation needed]

Here's mine - From: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2005/06/28/gun-deaths050628.html

"...In a cross-border comparison for the year 2000, Statistics Canada says the risk of firearms death was more than three times as great for American males as for Canadian males and seven times as great for American females as for Canadian females.

Because more of the U.S. deaths were homicides (as opposed to suicides or accidental deaths), the U.S. rate of gun homicide was nearly eight times Canada's, the agency says. Homicides accounted for 38 per cent of deaths involving guns in the United States and 18 per cent in Canada."

All is not lost, it appears the CRTC wants to hold hearings into throttling next year. So the whole internet throttling debate is just getting started in Canada. From the CBC:

The regulator's investigation, which began in May, was limited to Bell's wholesale practice and did not consider whether internet throttling should be allowed in general.

As such, the CRTC also announced it was opening a new probe into the larger issue of throttling, which is also done by other large internet service providers such as Rogers Communications Inc. and Shaw Inc. Interested parties will have until Feb. 16 to submit their thoughts and a public hearing will be held on July 6 in Gatineau, Que.

"The broader issue of internet traffic management raises a number of questions that affect both end-users and service providers,â von Finckenstein said. âoeWe have decided to hold a separate proceeding to consider both wholesale and retail issues. Its main purpose will be to address the extent to which internet service providers can manage the traffic on their networks in accordance with the Telecommunications Act.â

we are all going to have to get over seeing them as ugly or migratory-bird killers ...

A lot has been done to make wind turbines safer for birds. Bats, on the other hand:

"...wildlife fatalities at wind turbines are now a bat issue, not a bird issue."

It seems that bats, for some reason, are flying so close to the blades that the get caught in a vortex and suffer explosive decompression in their lungs. Yikes.

Even worse - bats tend to fly more frequently at low wind speeds. Note that this invention allows wind turbines to operate more efficiently at low wind speeds. Unfortunate combination.

I'm not saying that wind energy is bad - far from it. But regardless of what we do (i.e. seek 'clean' energy sources), there's going to be complications and a big, steep learning curve.

Here's a radio interview with one of the bat researchers

It was an impact probe that was dropped from a lunar sattelite, according to this article. Chandrayaan was apparently the name of the sattelite, not the probe, which is why it could land a probe despite not being recognized as sovereign in International circles.

CBC News: Now with more information and fewer typos than TFA!

Apparently in Scotland, it's turning into diamonds all by itself ...

Well, at least with help from those nouveau riche in China and India.

oh and did I mention that we keep crazy people off the street by giving them money (and possibly preventing them from harming others)....

Bullshit, Canada has thousands of crazy homeless people on its streets. Toronto alone has 5,052 (3,649 in shelters) homeless. The rest of Canada has started just giving free bus tickets out to British Columbia. I live in downtown Victoria where the homeless population is growing by 400 people a year. That in a city with a population of 80k and only 141 shelter beds. Do to the lack of shelters the homeless here just won a supreme court decision that now allows them set up camp in any city owned property. There are now homeless campsites up in three of the city parks including one in one the cities biggest tourist attractions and one across the street from an elementary school. If they are crazy or just high on drugs I cannot say, but most of them are not stable, and some are just scary.

Is this one of the human rights? As far as I know, no nation in the world allows you self-defense against the state (also known as cop-killing). There is also no nation in the world that has a law on the books that states: "If we, your government, suddenly turns oppressive (determined by the citizen's opinion), it is hunky dory to kill cops." As I understand it, the 2nd amendment gives you the right to wave your guns around, it doesn't give you the right to use them on people.

Note that this happened in Canada for a probable drug dealer who had his house raided under a bad warrant. It's called jury nullification (and note that the jury didn't even know it was a bad warrant).

I don't know if weapons or drug possession charges would still be valid given the state of the warrant. I figure that what happened is that the jury (rightly so) probably figured, yeah, he looks like he was a bad guy and may deserve to be put in jail for the other offences but given a recent history of home invasions and kidnappings, if I was in a position where people were breaking down my door without identifying themselves as police first, I should have the right to use the means at hand to defend myself and my family.

Your Second Amendment is nice in theory. In practice, it is a paper tiger.

I respectfully disagree, strongly. The second amendment does in fact have teeth, it kills over 12,000 Americans annually - enter "homicide" for option 1 and "firearm" for option 2.

Think about that. The number of combat deaths in the civil war was approximately 205,000 (most others died of disease). The right to bear arms in case a rebellion against the government is necessary results in the same number of fatal shootings as the civil war every 17 years! Right in people's homes and in the streets! What kind of sense is that supposed to make?!

And to the immediate north, Canada's gun deaths have been cut in half since imposing tough gun restrictions. Wouldn't it be nice if American kids could at least graduate college before a civil war's worth of murder occurs in their country?

Yep

I listen to the following podcasts that cover technical subjects and are the best I've found. The Naked Scientists provide the best overall coverage in hour-long sessions. Leoville's Futures in Biotech is very good in this cutting-edge field, but offers a limited number of entries. Perhaps more donations would enable the producer to do more. Microbeworld offers one-minute bites. Some of the leoville material that covers his radio call-in program last 2 hrs. Except for the FIB, all of his stuff is electronics-related (computers--Mac and Windows --, computer security, cell phones, digital cameras, and home theater). Some casts involve panels and guests. I've not included several more he does relating to food and children. Time compression software or other enhanced playback options are helpful with it as well as the other items if your time is limited.The Lancet offers several categories of current medical info. Podnuts is a computer repair discussion. Ziepod on Vista Home Premium works well to download all new episodes once a week. http://leoville.tv/podcasts/twit.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/microbeworld http://www.theworld.org/rss/tech.xml http://leoville.tv/podcasts/kfi.xml http://leoville.tv/podcasts/fib.xml http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_podcast.xml http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/includes/quirksaio.xml http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/rss.xml http://leoville.tv/podcasts/leo.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laneur.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/lancet.xml http://podcast.thelancet.com/laninf.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/podnutz http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/mh/rss.xml

It's funny you say that because many neighborhoods in the U.S. (specifically in Minnesota) are allowing shari'ah law to trump U.S. law when it comes to domestic disputes occuring between Islamic people. Gradually shari'ah law is becoming the new legal system. I believe England is seeing it happen more often than the U.S.

Interestingly, the province of Ontario (yes, in that liberal/socialist/left-wing bastion called Canada) ruled out use of Sharia law in 2005 for civil disputes.

That was the response by the Liberal premier, to a report that recommended Sharia be allowed, and the protests against those recommendations.

Not to be discriminatory against a single religion, in the same stroke the government also said Catholic and Jewish tribunals could no longer be used in deciding civil matters, something they'd been able to do on a voluntary basis since 1991.

Nope. The OP was correct--you seem to be looking at Harper's riding. Check out this page instead.

You seem to be looking at old numbers - see CBC for (what I assume are) accurate numbers. Looks like Prentice won with 72.9 percent popular vote, with 38545 votes.

(Also in Prentice's riding, and voted against him)

Cheers

Speaking as someone in Calgary Southwest (Harper's riding), where he won with 70-some percent of the votes, I am very disappointed, but not surprised that he won. Look at who is campaigning against him - we have pothead Kelly Christie (Green), Marlene Lamontagne (Liberal) who makes McCain look young, a nurse (Holly Heffernan, NDP), a pastor (Larry Heather), and a late runner libertarian not worthy of mention. (Disclosure - while I normally vote Green, I voted NDP this time because of a) I did not want this green candidate anywhere near government, and b) I support the NDP stance on a number of issues which are important to me, including bill C-61 and the war in Afghanistan).

Yes, the Conservatives did promise to reintroduce the copyright "reform" legislation. This will be the third attempt at it by the Conservatives.

As for the elections themselves, there are many interesting observations. Read my thoughts on Canada's federal elections 2008.

The real problem here is the system. Let's take a look at the ratios between the percentage of seats each party got in the election, and their percentage of the national popular vote:

Conservative
Seats: 143/308
Popular Vote: 37.63%
Ratio: 2.03 (More than twice the seats they would have obtained under a 100% proportional system.)

Liberal
Seats: 76/308
Popular Vote: 26.24%
Ratio: 0.94

BLOC Quebecois
Seats: 50/308
Popular Vote: 9.97%
Ratio: 1.63 (Interesting thing here; because voters in Quebec will vote the BLOC in much more often, they're skewed way above other parties even though they're practically running only in Quebec.)

NDP
Seats: 37/308
Popular Vote: 18.20%
Ratio: 0.66 (Screwed once again.)

Independent
Seats: 2/308
Popular Vote: 0.65
Ratio: 0.999 (Oddly proportional.)

Green
Seats: 0/308
Popular Vote: 6.80%
Ratio: 0.0 (Yeah. 6.8% of the vote, 0% of the representation. Good stuff.)

(Source: CBC.ca Election Results)

We could have even fixed this (at least in the Ontario Legislature) if we'd voted in MMP a year ago, rather than stayed with the skewed first past the post system. Unfortunately, I don't think enough people were educated about what the new system would mean and saw it as some sort of radical change, and so voted to stay with the current system.

Note: I think my math is accurate here but feel free to correct me.

Not if you're landing in Vancouver

You're compairing the downtime costs of a rarely visited website for a cult with that of one of the biggest financial presences on the internet?... oooookay then, whatever you think proves your point I guess...

And I'm not condoning his behavior... kids a moron. Key thing is this: KIDS ARE FUCKING MORONS! You don't put a kid in jail for it, that's stupid. You think putting him in prison is going to be an improvement to society? You think that a court case, fine, community service, and record of it isn't quite enough to get it into his head he screwed up big? Only way to drive the point home is to put him IN PRISON for a year and a half?

I don't know if you've ever been to court before, maybe on a traffic ticket, or similar... you damn well know how serious an issue is while you're there. Damn near any real sentence and a firm warning would have done a crap load more good not only for the kid, but society as a whole. He's going to be a much more productive and useful person if you get his ass into college then if you throw him in with rapists and killers.

Continue to argue your side if you want, but do you really think this kid for screwing off one weekend and doing something stupid which effected 1 website for a day or two is as bad as trying to solicit a 13 year old girl, or rigging an election, or forcing your daughter to stab her pet cat... because those were all about the same sentences he's going in for.

It's a matter of degree. In Canada, the average waiting time for a necessary surgery is 18 weeks. Having your appointment happen an hour late isn't even close.

the Fraiser Institute is a right wing think tank and is masterful at twisting statistics to seem to mean something they don't actually mean. they have a long history of railing against the government providing services to taxpayers on a non-profit basis.

if we bothered to get their raw data, the flaw in their analysis would no doubt reveal itself.

And where does the article say "necessary"?

It's a matter of degree. In Canada, the average waiting time for a necessary surgery is 18 weeks. Having your appointment happen an hour late isn't even close.

http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/logs.html He'll be on tomorrow 8:45 AM EST. If you can't get CBC on the radio or XM, the show will be podcast at the link above.

You had better take a look at this http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/06/13/canadapostups.html. UPS didn't WANT to compete, they wanted to sue. Just like everyone else.

Steve Jones was on a segment of the science program Quirks & Quarks on CBC Radio. Needless to say, the other experts interviewed had opposing viewpoints. Evolution doesn't stop, it just heads in different directions. Even if fathers aren't as old as they used to be, as Prof. Jones claims. But that itself seems to be an implausible statement -- I keep hearing that modern couples are delaying childbirth past the natural age of peak fertility.

This was discussed on Quirks and Quarks, a fantastic science news show on the CBC, a few weeks back (link to the show here, available as an mp3, or ogg).

It was a really interesting segment, have a listen. The show is also available as a weekly podcast, and I can't reccomend it enough.

Hurrah for public radio!

This was discussed on Quirks and Quarks, a fantastic science news show on the CBC, a few weeks back (link to the show here, available as an mp3, or ogg).

It was a really interesting segment, have a listen. The show is also available as a weekly podcast, and I can't reccomend it enough.

Hurrah for public radio!