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I want every pizza I ordered to be free, delivered instantly by a dozen naked supermodels. But just because my local pizza company will not provide such a service does not mean a new company will materialize to do so.
 
Is this close enough?

It's the wrong country, alright!

We're talking about AUSTRIA, the OPEC member.

Given that the other day Bush called the APEC conference the "OPEC" conference (and corrected himself), and that he thanked his host, John Howard, for the "Austrian" troops participating in Iraq (and didn't correct himself), Thompson might be able to make a case of it.

And if rudeness is what it takes, I apologize, but it's worth it.

Unfortunately, your ignorance is still showing. For years ISPs have been blocking and banning their users' legal applications (usually starting with "server applications" as the thin end of the wedge, with P2P applications currently on the chopping block), and blocking based on content isn't off limits either. What do you think SBC is threatening to do if Google and friends don't pay up, anyway? Send them a nasty letter?

*cough*troll

and not to be a troll myself,
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/24/tech -iphone.html

Go teenagers with nothing to do!
Free the world of technicological shackles brought on by corporate theives!

I am Canadian, and I am a regular listener/watcher of the CBC (the radio is much better than the television) and I agree that the article is pretty off base. However I just want to point out that for the most part CBC's news is usually very good and fiairly unbiased on most issues, although their slant is detectable in certain instances. (but who's isn't?).

CBC radio has some great programs http://www.cbc.ca/radio/. Especially Quirks and Quarks (A weekly science show, probably better than any other radio program for it's type (that i have heard anyway)). Also check out Brave New Waves and Radio 3 for some great underground music.

You "free market" capitalists can laugh at our "socialist" economy all you want, but it does produce some good :)

QC is a fun source. CBC Radio 3 (http://radio3.cbc.ca/) is good too, and their New Music Canada site lets indie bands stream their stuff: http://radio3.cbc.ca/. Enjoy.

QC is a fun source. CBC Radio 3 (http://radio3.cbc.ca/) is good too, and their New Music Canada site lets indie bands stream their stuff: http://radio3.cbc.ca/. Enjoy.

I think it's a demographic thing. People who smoke tend to drink. Once a smoking ban goes into effect there is an initial dip in patrons which recovers shortly after. I recall someone did a Case study of the smoking laws in British Colombia, Canada and the net effect was a drop in patrons initially and a recovery up to pre-ban numbers after. It's been a while since I've run across it but it came up when our city was proposing a similar ban and some pro-smoking and restaurant groups provided studies specifying a drop. The anti-smoking lobby pulled the one from BC to outline that it was a temporary state.

My own city has instituted a ban and has not had a mass closure of restaurants and bars. It's been 2 years now and I had not noticed any of the most vocal establishments which claimed they'd be run out of business close. Bingo's however have noted lower attendance. I live in Edmonton, AB Canada. Here are some articles on it.

Bingo

I couldn't find much more as the story is very old news here. I'd like to see stats from before and after as well as bars and restaurants tend to be a very dangerous business to begin with. Noting revenue declines in single locations or closures may not mean anything if the rate pre-ban was the same. Since it's a city wide ban it's not like people have anywhere else to socialize. It's counter intuitive that such a change could reduce business permanently.

Problem is, the censorship is because of the newspapers who refused to publish the comics, not because of the religion or its followers being made fun of.

You wrote : "Yet something really dangerous is occuring. The jews are far too small a group to be noticed, the christians are too corrupt, the hindoes barely matter in the western world but the muslims, now they seem to have gained a lot of control."

Come on... Jews "far too small a group to be noticed"? In the western world Jew lobbies are far more powerful than Muslim ones. I'm not trolling, just being realistic. For example here in France a radio host was fired a few years ago for a (bad taste) joke about the concentration camps. Maybe this was justified, anyway Jewish community may be small but has no problems being noticed when it wants to.

Let's not forget that here, the so-called "censorship" is due to newspapers refusing to publish it, not because of Muslims pressuring to have the comics banned. I don't see any proof of Muslims gaining "a lot of control". If anything, it shows the current obsession of western media with them. It shows how they're, again, spreading FUD. With an F as in FEAR.

The problem with the caricatures of Mahomet was not really that any representation of the prophet is forbidden. You'll often find them in satirical newspapers in the middle East, after all. What disturbed a lot of people was the fact that they were associating Mahomet with terrorism. The WIDE majority of Muslims are peaceful and condemn terrorism, of course it disturbed them, and they told so. Then this whole thing was everywhere in the Western media. Only after that, some fundamentalist assholes in the middle East tried to use this affair to serve their own propaganda, to galvanize crowds, but that's a completely different story.

It's not forbidden to make fun of Muslims. http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/ Now airing in France, too. Nobody complained.

Should I post this as a coward? Oh well, who cares about karma?

muhammad a while back

Even more recently, Jesus with a cigarette had a newspaper in trouble. Wonder if Opus is messing around with this story?

you COULD have followed the link which would EVENTUALLY have led you to the comic. i really do hope you're doin' your job a little bit mor effective. i mean, it's weekend and such, so you really can waste your time doing searches.

on the other hand this is not really about a comic strip, but about religion and freedom of speech. it's about the climate of fear that's been constructed ever since 9/11. it's about the same as here. (first link i found, didn't want to waste MY time doing searches ;) )

Chemist Dr. Shelley Minteer from St. Louis University developed the tech to extract power from sugar using a special membrane mimicking the process of living cells.

So either Sony licensed this or developed it in parallel.

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/mar31.html

According to Teh InterWebs, Montreal's population is only about 1.6 million. That's a little smaller.

No no no no. That's an obvious cia attempt to misdirect people's attention.

I hear you about the problems with the Red Cross - up here we took away their right to run blood donor clinics because they were negligent in screening. As a result, more than 1,000 Canadians contracted AIDS, and about another 20,000 got c hep.

Included on the lander is a Canadian-built weather station.
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/08/04/mars -lander.html

see Cosmic Killer in http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/may05.html

not programmed.. well, maybe.. or just "coding mistakes"

Reminded me of a story back in January'07 regarding a bunch of slot machines that all had a "bug" where a jackpot would flash by on a fairly regular basis. Seemed to blatant to be a mistake.

Here's the story:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/02/25/video-lo ttery.html?ref=rss

excerpt:
"But players who stick to a machine are seeing a winning image every two seconds, the time it takes for one spin, and that concerns Roger Horbay, an electronic gaming specialist who has treated hundreds of problem gamblers."

I've written a decent slot machine in flash ( toozy.com - but lack of advertising might make your click expensive to me ) and was amazed at how interested certain friends were with the project. One friend, who was not known for attending classes regularly, cut and pasted repeatedly in a spreadsheet program to do odds calculations. I broke down and validated my calculations using a brute force java code too - the odds when various wild card combinations were thrown in became quite convoluted! It was a very educational project - yes it's all math ( or should be ) but one thing I was dismayed at was the fact that the bonus games are pre-determined.. so if you are picking which fishing rod to pull in your bonus game just click any of them.. you're just deciding which one gets to show the result of the random number generator!

Speaking of suggestive.. my security image to submit this post on slashdot is "enlist" ;)

As such, Google is finding itself hiring lots of people, some of whom are sub-optimal for the jobs they're doing.

This problem is a good part of why Microsoft recently opened up a development centre in Vancouver BC. Canada's lighter immigration restrictions apparently allow them to have more of the best people that they can find (overseas), but still have them 'close to home'.

Done and done.

Okay.

Welcome to Canada, it's the Maple Leaf state

Gotta love the CBC (again, in Canada). I hear that Al Jazeera English is pretty impartial, too.

You have elections coming up, right?

Okay, that's a long-term goal.

That's why, if I take a vacation in Europe next year, I'm probably going to buy a GSM phone, unencumbered with all of this North American market philosophy. My understanding is that, in Europe, the mobile market involves many parties competing to provide the best service at the lowest cost... I'm not sure that I really understand this "competition" thing (that's where all of the gas stations charge exactly the same thing because you have no choice but to suck it up, right?), but I hear it's good.

Canada does not have spare Hydroelectric power, at least not is usable markets

Hydro Canada does supply about 60% of the nations power

Nevertheless, other than the abstract possibility that such a disconnect could be occurring [..] Since I specifically discussed the possibility in the post you are responding to,

You dismissed it. Unduly, I feel, but whatever. I raised it again, but as less of a caricature. Whenever any product goes from A) to B) dollars are spend and margins can be made. And in such cases, whenever there's a possibility of someone making a buck, there's also a probability of it. If you want me to provide evidence that it will happen, well your about a year too early.

So? Access to food and water isn't a problem for the vast majority of the people for whom these computers are being purchased.

It's the problem for the vast majority of people, period. And it should be a priority for anyone trying to 'help'.

Insofar as food and water (and electricity, healthcare, roads, physical structures for schools, etc.) are problems in the target areas, most of the countries involved are spending resources to address them already. In many cases, there is a point of diminishing returns where there is a limited amount that can be done efficiently at a time, and you have to complete that before moving on to the next project. These problems can't just absorb more resources efficiently to cut down the time to solve them. [...]
Uruguay has a 98% literacy rate. Argentina about 97%. Libya, Brazil, and Peru above 80%. Getting "classrooms with at least pencils and papers so kids and adults can learn to read and write" is quite simply not a fundamental pressing need in most of countries that are involved in the OLPC.

So the target group you mention includes people who can read and write (a minority in many countries), probably only in the roman alphabet. Hopefully these people have sufficient means to meet the basic necessities of life, but they are not yet purchasers of IT-related goods.

So the goal is not necessarily to help the most needy, but to develop a taste for tools, interfaces, and brands in a developing market. It sounds an awful lot to me like car companies giving away toy cars to kids during the depression.

Also, these types of projects have a history of being abused or counted towards 'aid' commitments. What "type"? Examples?

Here's a few:
http://www.cbc.ca/onthemap/fullpage.php?id=93

In particular, note the following passage:

Phantom aid includes over-priced technical assistance, tying aid to purchases from the donor countries own firms, high-cost consultants, excessive administrative costs, and double counting of debt relief.

Sound familiar?

Anyhow, I'm not saying it's a bad project, but people need to ask and keep asking these questions.

Interestingly, the Supreme Court of Canada just released a decision that cuts the opposite way. The Court upheld the "binding arbitration" clauses that many companies put in their various contracts and agreements. This essentially shields them from class actions, since disputes have to go to arbitration instead of the courts.

Since the matters involved in these cases actually took place, two provinces (Ontario and Quebec) have passed consumer protection laws (probably similar to Washington's) that protect consumers' ability to sue as a class. More jurisdictions need to step up to the plate and do the same.

He may have been referring to Jean Chretien's choke-hold on an anti-poverty protester:
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/asithappens/asithappe ned/asithappened_010218.html

The overly-litigious society can also cause burdens on individuals. Just over a year ago, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Childs v. Desormeaux that a host who serves alcohol at a party at their house is not responsible if someone drinks too much before coming to the party, doesn't drink at the party, and drives home and injures someone or destroys something. (A lot of people were saying the woman suing the family who held the party only did so because the guy who paralysed her had no money.)

Contributory infringement really goes too far in some cases, and a major problem is that unlike this case, when the average person could see that allowing the suing to go forward could personally affect them, when it's against a company, especially an "evil" company, people tend to feel it's just fine because the company deserves it, or is "faceless", or can afford it anyway.

Well we all knew it would come down to that, Aka, utter BS.

Earlier this year cbc had a "seven wonders of Canada" contest which produced a list that had one, perhaps two good entries if you were looking for natural wonders and five winners that can only make one go huh?

Mind you, if the commercials cbc was running were any indication of the quality of the entries they received, these may well have been the best entries; I remember one woman in a commercial explaining that the bay of fundy should be on the list for "having the nicest people she'd ever met". (btw if one is doing natural wonders the bay of fundy most certainly is one of the wonders of Canada but that has nothing to do with how nice the people are)

You expect these people, who are the low-paid, bottom-of-the-IT-food-chain to have ethics?

"I'd like to hear from someone up in the Great White as to exactly why they have those temperature sensing devices installed. Whose idea was it, the gas companies' or the peoples'? The article(s; I've looked at several elsewhere) seems to imply the former, but I can't find anything explicit on it."

Your intuition about the gas correction situation in Canada appears correct, though the reason is mostly due to the average Canadian climate. Having things corrected to a single temperature is a good idea for consistency sake. 15 degrees C is also the standard used for inter-refinery transfers and such, so it's a good choice for the same reasons. Unfortunately, the temperature chosen apparently doesn't match the average annual temperature in Canada, and therefore, according to the report, consumers are getting consistently shafted (or "hosed" in Canadian lingo).

For the reasons you describe (ground temperature doesn't vary as much), you're right that the temperature probably doesn't make as much difference as people think, but I think industry did its best to make sure it was on the "good" side of the equation.

You'll probably find the comments from the committed report quite amusing. PS: the committee recommendation was rejected.

[From p.51 of the "Report of the Liberal Committee on gasoline pricing in Canada", July 1998, from http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/cars/gasp rice/gasimages/gasreport.pdf%5D

"Automatic Temperature Compensation (ATC)

Liquids expand as temperatures rise and they contract when temperatures decrease. Gasoline has a high expansion coefficient. According to the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute,"it is estimated that a given volume of gasoline will increase or decrease approximately by 1/8 of 1% for every degree of temperature change".

Five years ago major Canadian oil companies, with the approval of Measurement Canada, accepted a system devised by U.S. oil refiners for their upstream operations and set a retail industry standard of temperature compensation at 15 degrees Celsius. As such, most retailers in Canada now have temperature compensated equipment that adjusts to that standard. Unfortunately for consumers, the average temperature in Canada is 6 degrees Celsius. Thus, a wrong standard was imposed at the retail level and refiners are the net beneficiaries.

It is a fact that 15 degrees Celsius is the American Petroleum Institute's accepted standard at the time of product transfer between refinery pipelines, ships and terminals. However, in all northern US states where the average ambient temperature is below that mark, industry practice, or law, excludes the sale of petroleum on a corrected basis into tank trucks or at retail. In most states where the average temperature is above 15 degrees Celsius, retailers sell product on an ambient basis. In either case, the method of sale at retail benefits the consumer while in Canada the opposite is true.

By converting to 15 degrees Celsius, Ontario consumers, for example, over several months of the year, receives less gasoline for the same dollar spent than if they were to purchase product at ambient temperature. Through the use of temperature correction devices in tank and retail pumps, the Canadian major refiner-marketer has added in excess of $100 million dollars a year to gross margins in that province alone.

That figure represents an absolute transfer of wealth from the consumer to the oil companies when compared to the situation prior to the implementation of costly ATC devices. As it now stands, purchasing gasoline that has been temperature compensated at 15 degrees Celsius is heavily penalizing consumers throughout Canada.

The Committee recommends that either Automatic Temperature Compensation be removed from use in Canada or, to avoid the losses incurred to install expensive ATC devices, that the 15 degree Celsius mark be lowered to the average regional temperature in which product is sold at the tank and retail level."

The summary is sensationalistic, and wrong. MS is not moving its R&D to canada, it is opening another development lab in Vancouver. And this has nothing to do with immigration visa issues, as it is trivial to get canadians to work in the US via NAFTA.

IBM, EA, ATI, AMD (just to name a few) all have huge labs in major cities in Canada. It's completely unsurprising for MS to finally follow suit and open a lab in Canada, where tech / engineering talents are aplenty. It's a bit surprising that they didn't open it near Waterloo, where a huge percentage of MS engineers are from... But Vancouver just makes more sense because of its proximity to Redmond.

BTW, a somewhat related article on CBC claims the Canada government is throwing money into luring back expat canadian tech workers down in the US:

"Meanwhile, the province is trying to lure back Canadians working south of the border. This summer, it is launching a $2-million program promoting new job opportunities, improved taxation and a higher dollar in their home country."

Draw your own conclusion at why MS is making this decision right after the announcement about "improved taxation" in Canada.

The Glasgow (for want of a better word) "bombers" suffered more lack of knowledge than stupidity: They were doctors, who managed to get British accreditation. http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/07/02/britain-b ombings.html Fair to assume they're capable of intelligence. In this case, they were operating (no pun indented) outside their field. I think we've seen the last 'A-Team Propane Tank' attack. Presumably those that go in their footsteps won't make the same mistake. If they'd been able to source and use dynamite, then yeah the "Explosive School" probably isn't a great idea. That's the worry.

Agree wholeheartedly with Bruce's narrative on Security Theater. While it seems crazy that we're not allowed to carry more than 100 mL of water per bottle on a plane, yet "Explosive School" doesn't raise an eyebrow, the bad news is we're an open society. If they're determined and smart, they can get the information they need from elsewhere, but maybe the FBI is smarter than we give them credit.

PS. Whoever modded my original post a "Troll": Read your moderator guidelines. If you've got a contrary opinion, post it.

Then what was this court case about?

Done. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/manitoba/story/2007/06/27 /mpi-law.html

So why Germans must pay to jews? Most of them weren't there to kill jews, you know... http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2002/08/27/german_p ensions020827.html

CBC also provides most (if not all?) of its online audio content in Ogg Vorbis format. They even provide live Ogg Vorbis streams of their radio stations (See http://www.cbc.ca/listen/ogg.html). CBC is very open-source friendly.

Check out this article while you're at it. Seems Ontario's Attorney General thinks it's ok that "cars adapted for street racing can be seized and destroyed, even if charges haven't been laid and a race has not taken place". In other words, screw the legal system, if the cops think your car may be used for street racing at somer point, they can impound it and destroy it and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

See, these events are the ultimate result of creating a nanny-state. Eventually the government will want to take away ALL your rights, while insisting it's doing it to "protect you". People insist that the US is a police state, while I as a Canadian can be arrested for unpopular speech, have severe limitations on the ownership of weapons, don't have the right to protect my property with physical force of ANY kind, including open-hand control, and now can have my private property destroyed by the government just because I'm suspected of maybe intending to commit a crime. Face it, we lost our rights a long time ago. Those of you protesting against this DMCA act are trying to close the barn doors after all the animals have run off, and the rest of the barn burned to the ground.

Tim Griffin, Michael Elston, Paul McNulty, Monica Goodling
Sara Taylor, Bradley Schlozman, Steve Biskupic, Alberto Gonzalez, David Safavian, Lurita Doan, Ken Tomlinson
Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, Kyle Foggo, Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, Curt Weldon, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Tobin
Scooter Libby, Manuel Miranda, Darleen Dryun, Thomas Scully, Chuck Mcgee, Pete Domenici
Porter Goss, Brant Bassett, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Jerry Lewis, Ed Buckham, Steven Griles, Mark Foley, Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Lay, Conrad Black, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Roger Stilwell, Tony Rudy, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, William Heaton, Adam Kidan, Neil Volz,

"Our law enforcement resources are seriously misaligned"

Which is more important for law enforcement to deal with -- copyright infringement or ACTUAL piracy on the high seas? The latter does exist, and was an increasing problem of late, but has subsided somewhat as governments have given it more attention. Should resources be redirected from the Coast Guards and navies of the world to combat copyright infringement instead? How can anybody advocate the claim that copyright infringment is more important for law enforcement to deal with than violent crimes?

Besides the fact the quoted numbers are bogus, this lawyer is an idiot for thinking the relative importance of everything can and should be measured in terms of dollars, and even if it were done, if you did a realistic cost analysis of violent crime, inclusive of its effect on victims and insurance, I'm sure that copyright infringement costs wouldn't look all that impressive anymore.

Since there seems to be an idea that my post was Flamebait (perhaps it is, but it was certainly not meant to be), I will simply state this:

Yes, I should have probably stated facts and references instead of just stating my opinions. Since I thought much of this information was fairly easily available and common knowledge, I didn't think I would get too much opposition. However, just doing a quick search on Google reveals more extremist Web sites on both sides of the issue rather than anything I would consider moderate.

There has been a lot more moderate and reasoned reporting on the Canadian Broadcast Corporation, as well as documentaries from the CBC, than on most Web sites I have found. You can check out Ideas http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/calendar/index.html (I don't have any specific references to any shows, but it's an excellent plug non-the-less). You can also check out http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page, which brings a more independent perspective compared to US news channels for example (critically judge everything of course, and keep and open mind). It should be stated though, that the late owner of Global News (another Canadian broadcaster) publicly stated that CBC is anti-semitic. Anybody who is familiar with the CBC would quickly realize that this is just political fear mongering.

Yes I am quite aware of the complexities of the issues of the Middle East and Israel. No I am not imminently afraid of going to jail for a hate crime. As I stated though, it is a _concern_, based on the political environment, that I could at least be accused of a hate crime, and possibly even have to go to court. I would definitely be more comfortable staying at least semi-anonymous rather than having some political organization call me anti-semitic or accuse me of a hate crime. It is a concern, however real it to be.

I assure you I have no love for the dictatorships in the Middle East or elsewhere, and that I fully support the US invasion of Afghanistan (although Iraq is another story).

I suppose we could get into the semantics of what I mean by "stealing" land. In reality, if some one came to my house and said I have to leave, then yes I would consider that stealing (to put it at its simplest).

I do have a VERY strong impression that a lot of posters here are just political zealots. I don't think anybody here could convince me that taking land from the Palestinians is good just because of political and religious history.

I do respect the moderation, and will be more careful and thoughtful with what I post. I may very well have been over-confident since this was so far my first "Flambait" posting (I've only been posting for about a month). I will take all opinions regarding this post into consideration. The more moderate and reasoned the opinions, the more they will have weight on me (and others).

Or maybe that's "pounding your ...."

I never cease to be amazed at people's ability to not only politicize every possible event, but for what should be reasonably objective people to read a headline and then start screeching about the evils of the powers that be.

As a simple example, the summary [taken directly from the article without actually checking other sources] makes this sound worse than it is.

Here's a bit more detail: "If the satellite falters, experts estimate that the accuracy of two-day forecasts could suffer by 10 per cent and three-day forecasts by 16 per cent. That could translate into large tracts of coastline and the difference between a city being evacuated or not.". Even this adds in a nice piece of conjecture. So, let's assume that 2 days out, the model is showing a probability path that's 100 miles wide. That translates to it now being 110 miles wide. What if the path was 300 miles wide? That's 330 miles. At 3 days, we're looking at 116 miles and 348 miles respectively.

To address where the percentages come from, you'll have to rely on my 3rd hand recollection from a newscast I saw on the subject earlier in the week. They took the models that they ran in the past with the satellite data and reran them without the data. No information was given on how accurate the models themselves are.

The info quoted above came from an AP story. A copy of which is here: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2007/06/13/tech -hurricane.html

Those regions already exist. Any of over half a dozen European powers, Australia, and even our neighbor Canada have the military resources, technology and skill to smack down a carrier battlegroup that threatened its territory with near impunity.

Your kidding about the Canada part are you not? One of our more advanced weapons are subs, old diesel kind. (A CBC story on the subs) Not a match for the nuclear kind with lots of electronics. Heck, those subs of ours probably still use tubes and CRTs.

The US has 9 times the population, invade Canada it is all over. Our asses would be kicked so hard... and our own government doesn't let us have guns to defend ourselves. We might be able to throw wild beavers and river rocks at invaders. Your worst enemy would the mosquitoes in the bush areas.

If you opened up your borders for lawful Canadians born in Canada to freely immigrate to the US on a whim, you could take 20-25% of the population out without even firing one shot.

I submit, Canada is a Zero threat to the US. If the Canadian Armed forces put everything they had against one carrier it would be turkey shoot for the US carrier.

Don't, don't, DON'T visit the United States as long as the United States does extraordinary renditions on innocent Canadian citizens passing through the United States. I'm serious. Stay away. Don't even pass through.

What country has sane gun laws? Japan? Australia?

If you care do do a bit of research you'd find that Australian gun laws changed after the Port Arthur Massacre, and semi-automatic weapons were banned. The results? No mass shootings since 1995.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-deaths-in- rapid-decline-since-buyback/2006/12/13/11656857524 21.html

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/14/australia -gun.html

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/short/ 12/6/365

http://www.physorg.com/news85298565.html

Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.

Creationism museum to open in Alberta

Ratings on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada were about the same as last year's Edmonton-Carolina tilt through the first four games of the final, but down 16 per cent from Calgary-Tampa Bay in 2004.

A poll by Decima Research before the Anaheim-Ottawa series suggested 24 per cent of Canadians felt Toronto is Canada's representative hockey team, compared to 22 per cent for Montreal and just 15 per cent for the Senators.

Yet with the Senators facing elimination, not a single federal MP bothered to offer a statement of support Wednesday in the House of Commons.

Still, Canada's hockey fervour simply eclipses support in the far larger American market.

NBC recorded the network's lowest-ever rating for a prime time program when it broadcast Game 3 from Ottawa on Saturday night. In a market 10 times larger, NBC got less than half the 2.6 million viewers who watched the game in Canada.

Even in Anaheim's Orange County home, things aren't exactly ducky.

Only a small percentage of southern Californians follow hockey, not surprising given the many competing pro sports and a climate fit for bikinis rather than balaclavas.

Those who support the Ducks are keen - the team sold out its last 34 home games, including Wednesday night - but the interest is not widespread.

When a restaurant on the Pacific Ocean 20 kilometres to the west of the Honda Center set out a sidewalk sign announcing Monday's game from Ottawa would be shown on a widescreen TV, the few folks on hand paid little attention to the action. Staff wouldn't turn off the music so the play-by-play audio could be heard.

That would be incomprehensible on Ottawa's Sens Mile, some 30 kilometres east of Scotiabank Place.

Most bars along the Elgin Street strip were full by 5:30 p.m. ET Wednesday, almost three hours before game time, and after the puck dropped in Anaheim the only sounds on the street were the muffled play-by-play of CBC's Bob Cole and roaring fan reaction - both inside and out.

Lineups at the bigger establishments remained three deep on the sidewalk as fans watched the game through open windows.

You won't believe what else: The TB guy (Andrew Speaker is his name) is a "personal injury attorney", his father-in-law works at the CDC, has worked with TB, and even gave the TB guy some "fatherly advice" (independent of the official advice). The news details are on the CNN web site, among many other places.

What the heck is this, a toned-down version of 12 Monkeys? This is a science fiction plot! Thank goodness his TB apparently isn't active, and therefore isn't very contagious.

I hope he's going to pull through his illness okay. Seriously...

So that if he isn't charged with a crime (he apparently didn't do anything specifically illegal), he can get his "very well-educated, successful, intelligent" ASS SUED OFF by all the dozens of people who he put at risk and who are now enjoying the hassle of testing for TB in half a dozen countries. My sympathy for him ends the moment his medical condition does.

It's too bad there is no medical cure for being a selfish ass, but maybe he will learn something positive from the experience: like caring about people other than himself.