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Also - what do you suppose Blobmouse thinks of all this? Some mice get all the good mutations..

P.S. Your paranoia is showing. No worries though, there's a gene for that too.

Now let's all go build a Mega-Blok castle on Hans Island and really teach those bastards a lesson.

As an aside, since they are made in Montreal would they be Mega-Blok Quebecois? And if so is it ironic or paradoxical that separatist cubes would be specifically designed to stick together with things.

-Pinkoir

the UK's forgotten stepchild (Canada, eh?) is beginning to look warm and sunny by comparison.

Somebody hasn't been to Canada lately.

The press releases are spinning this as an update of the wiretap law.

For those of us who are not legal experts, can someone clarify the procedure to obtain a wiretap?

With respect to this bill, the CBC report at
http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/15 /surveillance051114.html?ref=rss
says:

"However, McLellan said that just like in the old wiretap days, police investigators will have to get the approval of a judge before they can have access."

This sounds different from the article.

The iPod levy was ruled invalid and Apple is refunding it.

I agree with the rest of your rant entirely. Sony has always rubbed me the wrong way with their arrogance and I own very few Sony products. Now I will start checking CD labels for Sony-ness.

The WHO was warning about Avian Flu in 1997 and they were wrong. Last year, the WHO was warning about Avian Flu in 2004 and they were wrong. Now the WHO is warning about Avian Flu this year.

The Avian Flu is over-hyped according to former Chief Medical Officer of Health for the province of Ontario
http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/05-06/nov05.html

Am I the only one, having a somewhat strong immune system, that is not in the least bit worried about a pandemic?

A string immune system is not garuntee that you will survive. The 1918 flu killed a lot of healthy people.

The flu was most deadly for people ages 20 to 40. This pattern of morbidity was unusual for influenza which is usually a killer of the elderly and young children.
http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/uda/

The 1918 virus sometimes killed completely healthy people in killed overnight.
"Some people would go to bed healthy and never wake up."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/flu/fluepidemic. html

This was one of the flus that worked so fast the immune system couldn't keep up.

Except that isn't the myth. The myth is that food is safe to eat after 5 seconds on the floor.

link

Requires flash

From the post:

The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

The actual quote from a hyperlink in the article mentioned in the post:

"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space"

The actual largest non-nuclear explosion occured during World War One in Halifax Harbour when an munitions ship collided with another ship and exploded. It is known as the Halifax Explosion. It was picked up on seismographs and created an 18 metre tsunami.

From the post:

The resulting event is reportedly the largest non-nuclear explosion in the planet's history.

The actual quote from a hyperlink in the article mentioned in the post:

"The result was the most monumental non-nuclear explosion and fire ever seen from space"

The actual largest non-nuclear explosion occured during World War One in Halifax Harbour when an munitions ship collided with another ship and exploded. It is known as the Halifax Explosion. It was picked up on seismographs and created an 18 metre tsunami.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/11/07 /bc-fire-051107.html

Smoking never hurts anyone but the smoker though...

Right?

Here is a good podcast on the subject.
http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/archives/00-01 /mp3/qq060101c.mp3

They guy interviewed gets very detailed about what happens at different depths to the carbon dioxide.

Just because the NY Times, CNN, the LA Times, and the Washington Post dare to print something other than Undying Praise for the Fatherland does not make them left-leaning. It makes them journalists doing their jobs. I think the non-U.S. news coverage of the same events is more aggressive, such as the CBC, the Toronto Globe and Mail, and the BBC. I take the truth as an average of these sources, along with some help from FAIR and the Columbia Journalism Review.

If I want left-leaning, I can go to the Independent Media Center, the Alternative News Network, The Raw Story, or the Fifth Estate.

It's important to remember, though, that the BBC is subsidized by a tax the British government adds on to the retail price of all televisions in the UK, in addition to other funds the British government provides. The American broadcast networks (other than PBS/NPR) are commercial and don't have the luxury of heavy subsidies. And the republicans want to cut all funding for American Public broadcasting. So, what little we do have is already under attack.

Hi, A bit old, but an article about some high school dropout that came up with a cheap way to make hydrogen: http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/19/hydrogen04011 9

While you're at it, have it last year-round. Not like it hasn't been done before:

The last time the United States and Canada observed different winter time systems was during the 1974-75 oil crisis. The U.S. did not turn its clocks back at all that fall in an attempt to conserve energy.

From http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/07/28/ daylight050728.html?print

Better to have to change once and get it over with than replay the same drama every decade when someone wants to avoid problems like having hundreds of thousands of people driving huge vans and SUVs to work with no passengers. By the way, why is gas so much more expensive in other countries when we seem to waste it? From time to time I hear about equivalent prices of over $10/gallon.

Some parts of Australia have adopted daylight time. Of course, it's done a little differently than in the Northern Hemisphere where seasons are opposite. So, when daylight time starts in Canada, it comes to an end in Australia and vice versa. When Canadians are waxing their skis in December, Australians are waxing their surfboards because it's summer there. (Emphasis mine)

Are there actually people who don't know that it's summer in the southern hemisphere when it's winter in the northern? Although I do know that you north americans have some stunningly thick people (+1 Insightful, -1 Troll), it beggars belief that this is sufficiently unknown to warrant comment.

Something about Canada prime minister 'Jean Putin' and Bush LOL.

Something about Canada prime minister 'Jean Putin' and Bush LOL.

As opposed to a few pairs of bolt cutters away from being without internet access? http://www.cbc.ca/story/business/national/2005/07/ 25/telus-050725.html

There was an interview on Friday evening on the CBC show As it happens with Jamie Van Cleemput, one of the scientists on the team. There is a link on this page http://www.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/200 5/10/14.html to an audio file that contains the interview http://cbc.ca/asithappens/media/dailyshow/2005-10- 14-aih1.ram

There was an interview on Friday evening on the CBC show As it happens with Jamie Van Cleemput, one of the scientists on the team. There is a link on this page http://www.cbc.ca/insite/AS_IT_HAPPENS_TORONTO/200 5/10/14.html to an audio file that contains the interview http://cbc.ca/asithappens/media/dailyshow/2005-10- 14-aih1.ram

England, Canada

Yet another reason why freedom loving people love Canada. (-:

Check out this interview that occured on CBC's The Fifth Estate. In an example of how Ann Coulter plays fast and loose with 'facts' she knows nothing about, in order to make her point, we see how she behaves when caught in her mistake:

Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"
        McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."
        Coulter: "I don't think that's right."
        McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."
        Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"
        McKeown: "Uh no. Canada ...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."
        Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
        McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."
        Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
        McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."
        Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."
        McKeown: "No."
        Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."

McKeown tags out in script:

        "Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."

Yep, Coulter's a reporter with integrity, yessir...

I believe this documentary may be what you are looking for.

In the case of CNN, if you falsely report a story, that's not necessarily bias. The motivation behind airing the story might, but to be honest, not airing a story that you think would be big for the sake of protecting people's image would probably be biased. And it's not like he went unpunished (even if it was a self-inflicted resignation).

Then again, I have a tough time watching any major news outlet. Except maybe the BBC.

Maybe this is what freaked out a pod of killer whales this summer off the west coast...
http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/05/08/whales_sonar0 30508

http://www.cbc.ca/story/science/national/2005/10/1 1/hobbit-flores051011.html

Dr Matthias Oehm, chief executive officer of Eurockot, said they had not received the expected signals from either the spacecraft or the upper stage of the rocket that should have injected it into orbit.

That's probably because it broke up and crashed into the ocean.

The picture of the day on the cbc.ca website was of a Soyuz rocket being taxied to the launch pad, great picture btw..
(caption from cbc website) "Russian Soyuz rocket booster is taken to a launch pad at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Sept. 29. The next U.S.-Russian space crew, including U.S. space tourist Gregory Olsen, is scheduled to blast off on Oct. 1. (File: AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev)"

What's that shuttle in the background ??

And American communist mentality with softwood lumber, wheat, "Mad-Cow" [1] and others, well, then the Americans are right?

There is a subsidy for milk in Canada, yes. There is also one for milk in the US! Furthermore, Canada did not allow canadian cows to be given the growth hormones that US cows are fed which ends up in the milk. This also causes the price per liter to be higher on our side of the border.

[1] - Mad Cow problems are quite ammusing considering that the Canadian and American cows eat the same shit for quite a while now. The US system is virtually the same as Canadian and that was done years ago to allow more shipment of cows to the meat packers in the states because Canada doesn't have enough of them. But the US ranchers wanted more demend for their beef and I guess they got it. Too bad that now Canada is building more sloughterhouses which means two things,

    1. less jobs in US, more in Canada on the meat processing
    2. Canada becomes a competitor to the US for beef exports.

In the long term, the US loses for hurting the Canadian beef industry. And it was hurt because we relied on the US meat packer plants!

US subsitizes their farmers hell of a lot more than Canada => US has much more communist farming practices. If you want proof, search Google for numbers and you'll find out Canada doesn't have the money to pay equal susities like the commie US and Western Europe.

Putting panties on head is torture? A naked pyramid is torture? (I've known people who have paid for more) Where are the American rape rooms? How many hands of "dissidents" has GWB cut off.

Or beating him a uniformed officer for days, then smothering him to death: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/02/AR2005080201941_pf.html

Or the stuff listed in Maj. Gen. Taguba's report:

• Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees;
• Threatening detainees with a charged 9mm pistol;
• Beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair;
• Threatening male detainees with rape;
• Allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell;
• Sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.
• Using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.

All under the supervision of unamed government agencies and "private" contractors. What kind of lunatic Army outsources military intelligence? Answer -- they don't. It's all just a dodge to get the dirty deeds out from under the military code, or CIA rules.

Dammit! Smug bastards like you drive me mad. You're so tough, signing off on the rough things that need to be done, without ever facing up to reality. Just google 'US' and 'torture' -- unless you believe the entire world and internet is involved in a conspiracy to smear the good name of Uncle Sam. http://www.cbc.ca/cp/world/050925/w092528.html http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/08/26/10934 56748705.html http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-ophar234437 651sep23,0,6341987.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headli nes http://www.nwherald.com/MainSection/other/29837079 9741982.php We don't even need to go into the torture training in Paraguay, Uraguay, and at the School of the Americas.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/ scroll down to "Overview of the dispute"

Interesting how the same people who will not question some company selling software are the same people who critize the government when they say there is a terrorist threat.

You can defend the government all you want, but deep down inside you know that having outed a CIA agent, if the administration had anything at all they could point to that says "all this money is working!"... one single terrorist arrested on our soil, one single plot foiled... there'd be dozens of interns, assistants, and freshman representatives out stalking every news anchor in Washington DC, stumbling over themselves to "accidentally" leak the story.

Instead, so far we've got Jose Padilla who by all accounts is an idiot, and some Canadian who was arrested crossing the border legally because his name was like one on "The List", exported to Syria, tortured, and held for over a year before being released, 40 pounds lighter.

So go ahead, tell us ALL about "protecting lives" because our government sure isn't.

Let me prick your typical commie Chinese propaganda bubble please!

>> Tibet has been part of China more than at least 300 years ago in Qing Dynasty

India was part of the British Empire for > 200 years (starting from the time when British East India Company victory at Plassey in 1757 to Indian independence in 1947)

That does NOT give Britian any right to invade India again and capture it..

The Chinese Communist Propaganda machine uniquely and illogically takes advantage of an earlier colonisation of Tibet to justify a more recent and brutal one.
It was plain invasion and no amount of whitewashing will do away the stink.

>> China in its long history proved to be a peaceful country. Almost never invaded any neighbours, instead, attracts its neighbors with more advance culture and economy.

Wow, more propaganda!

just a few invasions of china are here.. rest can be mightly googled!
  http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/f ebruary/17/newsid_2547000/2547811.stm

1979: China invades Vietnam
China has sent hundreds of troops into Vietnam after weeks of tension and a military build-up along the border.

http://www.2neatmagazines.com/life/1962cover.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/india/timeline.h tml

16 Nov 1962 China invades India
After a short war India loses territory in the northwestern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

China still holds to occupied lands of Indian Territory in Aksai Chin.

China today threatens to invade Taiwan.

What do you want to say, China became such a large country through non-violent and peaceful means? Nay, it was through continous invasions and extermination of other nationalities that today China is predominantly and uniformly of the HAN population.. what happened to other ethnic communities of that region?

China is a bully of the region and will always remain as such.

>> is one among over 30 provinces that accepts most fund from the central government

Yeah, those funds are for Han Chinese to build factories and colonise the Tibetian Land.
Do the Tibetians profit from the money flow? Hell no.

>>Today's tibet are not oppressed by any one
When ordinary Chinese students were massacred by the Authoritative Govt. in Tiammen Sq.. what about the fate of the colonised people, one can very well guess.

Some well-funded players have an interest in just outright owning everything. I think they would very much like for us all to get tired of hearing about it.

NewMusicCanada is run by the CBC. This is one service the government provides that I have no problem seeing my taxes go to.

Actually, large amounts of money could be involved. No ice means new shipping routes. There's already a war of words brewing over land up there.

(I am a PM now and have learnt the hard way never to delete a mail)

is that you, Prime Minister Martin!? You certainly learned it the hard way.

This unsubstantiated rumor came out within days of 9-11. It sounded plausible -- at least worth checking into. But years and years of detailed study of the event has repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that it was not true. The only people still repeating it are grossly misinformed. Yet there are still people, such as Newt Gingerich, repeating the claim in 2005, more than 3 years later. He said, "Far more of the 9/11 terrorists came across from Canada than from Mexico." You'd think politicians speaking on news programs about the subject, and the news people asking them questions, wouldn't be so (ahem) misinformed, but apparently they are (other politicians have repeated the same error). At least Gingerich had the grace to apologize for the error, but it makes you wonder what the heck the 9-11 commission was for if basic facts get ignored like this.

Please get it through your head: NONE of the hijackers came into the US from Canada or Mexico. NONE. ZERO. Anything otherwise is an urban myth. As far as I can remember, ALL the hijackers got into the U.S. legally with visas.

The only guy that might be relevant in a discussion like this is Rassam, who entered the US from Canada (I think it was from Quebec or Ontario) with the intent to bomb LAX. He was caught at the border, and apparently had nothing to do with 9-11 anyway.

Look, it was possible that Canada could have been the way the terrorists got in on 9-11, but it did not happen that way. Canadians are still deeply mindful of the possibility, and the implications if terrorists ever did get in that way. Canada does not want this to happen, ever. But we have to go through the same debates about acceptable measures as the US does.

The power for police to wire-tap e-mail without court order goes too far, in my opinion. It should be subject to the same procedures as phone taps.

it was my impression, and this was reiterated many times, that not one of the 9-11 terrorists came through Canada

Your impression is correct. Hearing this myth repeated ad nauseum by Fox pundits is one thing, but when a politician spouts it as well, that's another. When Newt Gingrich used this "fact" earlier this year, our Ambassador to the U.S. called him out pretty quickly, and forced an apology. Here is one article on the story.

First arresting Ernst Zundel for denying the Holocaust, then persecuting a forum poster for ethnic slander, and now this. O Canada! I guess history does repeat itself, and the most Marxist nation in the West will be the first to go Stalinesque. If nothing else, it will be a good excuse to finally invade.

to showcase monopolies, you pick out: microsoft, mpaa, riaa, phone companies, clear channel.

all good choices, and none of them depend on an exhaustable resource in the ground. so the fact that monopolies exist in places where things like raw materials aren't much of a problem means that there are most likely more in industries where raw materials play a key role.
this is becuase the barrier to entry into a raw material base industry is much higher, this gives less competition, more consolidation, bigger companies, more monopolies.

"That's why the current price spike worries the heck out of them. While it's great for them in the short term, its consequences are disturbing to them in the long term. If energy prices stay high, it leads to worldwide recession which dramatically cuts into their profit margin..."

you might think so, but i doubt it. as you said,
"Stock price is everything to a major company."

the fact that stock price dominates companies decision making is big part of the problem. the people in the "finance" industry seem to live and die on quarter to quarter profits , and this puts pressure on the companies to perform now. you might have noticed this pressure in the form of enron, worldcom, healthsouth, adelphia, and some that have not been discovered yet. so when a stockholder looks up an oil stock and sees that they've been having record profits, the stockholder will buy. this tells the company that they are doing something right. so the company is forced to think in the short term if it wants to continue to "grow" by getting more investment from outside.

"Both of these things are highly illegal, and mergers between large oil companies are subject to antitrust approval in most of the nations (including ours) that they operate in."

yeah, but if they buy the congressmen (you can tell me they don't, but i am certain that they do), then the laws don't mean squat.
and, as for companies doing something illegal, it should be noted that this is simply a financial decision, not a "moral" one. if the benefits, in terms of profits, of doing something illegal outweigh the potential consequences, like a fine, then the company will do it. there is no doubt in my mind about that.

just look at what bechtel did...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/water/bolivia.html

or maybe monsanto...
http://www.sptimes.com/2005/07/24/Worldandnation/T he_reporter_Detroit_.shtml

or how about what walmart and many other compaies are doing by paying chinese workers like 10 cents an hour.

"But you try to hide a conspiracy in an industry that consumes a major portion of the entire world's economy and employs hundreds of millions of people worldwide."

just because there are many people involved doesn't mean that there isn't a conspiracy. just look at the auto industry... over 100 years and we still have an engine that works on the same design. does that mean that, out of all of the smart engineers, no one has come up with a better idea? or that the internal combustion engine is the be all end all of inventions? no. it means that because people are still making money off of the engine, they see no reason to change. so, as people are still making money in the oil industry, there is nothing to drive them to change or to question why things are the way they are.

and just because there are many people involved doesn't mean anything. world war II showed us that. people say "how could the germans be so blind as to not see the execution of MILLIONS of people?" i mean, millions of people simply gone, how did someeone not notice, how did WE not notice?

Yeah -- I'm with you on the ultimate boringness of blogs. There are some cool podcasts though. In about 15 minutes, I'll be walking home from work (about 5 miles, greenway half the way). I did this on Wednessday too. I figure it's a good way to lose a bit of the chub I've been building up sitting at a desk all the time.

On Wednessday while walking around downtown during lunch, I listened to a slew of "Quirks and Quarks" segments, a CBC radio show about various science topics. Some interesting things on that -- like using aluminum to release the hydrogen from water to power a fuel cell. Aluminum Oxide can be recycled back to aluminum and the process repeated -- no free energy of course, but the guy was talking about an application for laptops that would be about the size of a power brick but would power the computer for 24 hours. Also, the scientist sounded exactly like the mad scientist (played by Max Von Snydow (sp?)) in "Strange Brew". Definitely left an impression. Scroll down for Aluminum Amperage -- oh comes in ogg too.

On my walk home I listened to skepticality which was OK -- I'm looking forward to listening to the James Randi interview for sure. Although on today's walk, I might listen to NPR's Science Friday.

Anyway, walking is boring, but listening to science shows and walking is quite a lot of fun. You can avoid the blog-like-crap if you want to.

If the US (the country that most often seems to come up in this sort of thing) doesn't like something in its country, it should stop it at the border. The US has become drunk with power, to the point where it extrodites foreign citizens for commiting crimes on foreign soil, if they have so much as a relation to the US. For example, this story. This has to end at some point before the US rules the world.

This whole issue only comes up because the poor way in which health care is structured in the U.S. If we had universal health coverage, it wouldn't really matter much "whose fault it was". The person with the injury would get treatment, and that would be the end of the problem. All the money that is currently wasted on finger-pointing litigation and redundant paperwork could be spent on actual medical care instead. (and before you accuse me of being business-unfriendly, let me point out that even big business is finding that the lack of a coherent health care system makes the US less competitive)

And on another note, why is every trend always "troubling", every impact "profound"?

That's not the case at all -- there are plenty of trends that are non-threatening and unimportant. It's just that nobody bothers to write articles about them, for precisely that reason.

I find it amusing that those who would, say, be fully in support of embryonic stem cell research, apparently throwing any ethical concerns to the wind, all of a sudden see "troubling" ethical implications for employers trying to use the same essential tools.

The distinction you are missing is that embryonic stem cells come from embryos, which are (a) not persons (in the commonly understood sense of the word), since they don't have minds or bodies, and (b) going to be thrown away anyway, so stem cell research will at worst not result in any loss of life that wasn't going to be lost anyway, and at best will save or improve the lives of millions of people. Genetic discrimination, on the other hand, has potential to cause significant problems for many people, hence the hand-wringing. (Go watch Gattaca if you'd like to see an example of the sort of things people want to avoid)

Too bad the choppers in question are Chinooks.

This seems rather akin to British subs.