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Don't worry, you can make any statement you like in Canada so long as it insults Americans. Take her for example.

You never hear of a BASE jumper living his days out in the old folk's home...

Your link doesn't work for me, but I've got several of his solo LP's (and a Hammer/Schon LP I never liked) from around the Miami Vice time and earlier. He used a fancy strap-on keyboard (sometimes generically called a 'keytar', a keyboard you wear on a strap like a guitar). I don't remember the brand name (ISTR the model was discussed in an issue of Polyphony, a magazine which later became Electronic Musician), but several manufacturers made them, such as the Korg RK-1.
These were all basically MIDI (Thanks, Dave Smith) controllers (which output commands to synthesizers telling them which note to play, but not generating sound themselves), and the only uniqueness the keyboard brought to the sound was from Jan's deft use of the pitch-bend wheel, simulating the string bending of a lead guitarist.
Hammer is shown playing this device in the photograph midway down this page:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/miamivice.html

Find a new one
And a gay hating, condom shirking Cardinal from Africa is going to replace him.

John Paul II was truely a Polish Icon.

Do you mean like this:
CBC

It was my understanding that in the US -- Much like in Canada, the Health Care "system" is actually a hodge-podge of state-run systems, and that not all will offer the same subsidies nor the same costs.

In Ontario, there are many people being told they won't funded for live saving medicine. Here is more info

That being said, isn't that boy an Aboriginal Canadian? He should then be covered by the Federal Government ("Indian Affairs"), and then subject to a whole hacky-sack of MORE RESTRICTIVE regulation on medicine than the already deprived Canadian public have to deal with. Nevermind the fact that it's the deal the Crown gave Aboriginals for taking their country away and putting them on per-capita smaller reserves than in the US. More Info

I have a cousin in Arizona. He goes to the free clinic, cuz he can't afford the expensive Health Care. He gets good service and has never been turned away from anything.

It's not perfect, and I agree it's not the best situation. But in Canada there are people told they won't have their Cancer treated because they are Statistically not optimal candidates . So what do people like this do???

They go to well-known Cancer Treatment centers in the US, and pay thousands to have their LIVES SAVED.

Until you've been told you have Cancer, or worse, and then are told you need to wait 6-14 weeks for an MRI and then another 4-8 weeks for surgery... you have no idea how friggered up the Canadian Health Care system is.

Been there. Done that.

Now, as an aside, if your bro' in Phoenix was told to pay over $500 a month for wifes coverage, she probably had a pre-existing condition. I agree, that is garbage, cuz she was probably dropped by someone else. That's the problem that needs to be addressed in the US. Keep in mind that many US states subsidize lower to middle income people in order that they can get on the medicare roles. Others, like Oregon Health Plan are state-sponsored health, and somewhat similar to those systems in Canada and other countries.

Now, getting back on point; Canada has no selective service, because it has no Army (none to speak of, anyway). How would they fund the processing of those potential recruits, when they can't even get a Gun Registry to work???

Now, my last question: WTF does all this have to do with the DMCA? Talk about wandering off the thread!!!!

1) i've read intellectual impostures cover to cover.

2) i'm fully aware that sokal and bricmont's criticism is limited strictly to the abuse of scientific concepts. however, as dawkins pointed out, when someone gets caught commiting intellectual fraud, they've blown their credentials when it comes to things i don't know anything about.

3) this has everything to do with NGJ, as I pointed out in the original post that spawned this thread. i will likewise refer you to this post. i've already explained how i'm using the term postmodernism to stand for larger problems in the humanities.

4) i never asked for research in cultural studies to be halted because of a few unscrupulous "theorists". when scientists, like this guy, get caught faking it, the whole of their work gets reexamined and much, if not all of it, gets thrown out.

I think it's the economic climate nowadays. Canadians are carrying more personal debt than ever (I'd imagine US is the same), taxes are higher and income hasn't kept up with the price of inflation. The PSP is the apex of superfluousness (aha, I found my subject heading) at a time when everyone seems to be cutting corners and pinching pennies.

And it's all just PS2 games on a smaller screen. Big whoop.

Well, I must say that the old axiom 'the grass is always greener on the other side' must hold true here. Yes, Canada has said no to the DMCA - this is a good thing (tm).

HOWEVER, Canada has far more draconian free speech rules than in the United States. This is small fries compared to other things that have happened in Canada. The case of Ernst Zundel is an excellent case in point. While not a Canadian citizen, he was deported under a national security order for his views. The article was carried here,, and I'd suggest you look into it.

That being said, I am a Canadian and this is an excellent move in my opinion. I just wish we could combine some elements of your system of government and your essential freedoms that are lacking up here. We don't even have a concrete bill of rights that can't be overriden in many regards by our legislature.

You might want to take a look at CBC radio's programs available as podcasts. CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and one of the shows they podcast is their science show, Quirks and Quarks, which I've enjoyed for years. Good science from an organization that's been doing radio broadcasts for long enough that they don't have any trouble getting it right. :)

I gather the podcast doesn't contain all of the music contained in the radio version, due to copyright issues, but the science will still be good!

You might want to take a look at CBC radio's programs available as podcasts. CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and one of the shows they podcast is their science show, Quirks and Quarks, which I've enjoyed for years. Good science from an organization that's been doing radio broadcasts for long enough that they don't have any trouble getting it right. :)

I gather the podcast doesn't contain all of the music contained in the radio version, due to copyright issues, but the science will still be good!

Canada has had "As It Happens" since 1968. It's daily, sometimes quirky and much better than mainstream news. It airs at 6:30 PM local time but can be heard via the net. Their archives are not too bad also.

The files are Real Audio only though, that's a bit of a piss-off.

but it shouldn't essentially be that way; sure, there should be radio programs that just offer background murmuring, that's a niche that needs to be filled. But by no means should they all be that way. Thankfully, radio stations in my area such as the CBC and the local campus radio (CJSR . . . now you know where I live ;) have offered enough in the way of intelligent programming that I have been able to see what radio is capable of being.

I can see that some people might never think of radio as being more than just background noise, depending on what they've been exposed to. Alot of radio, in a lot of places, especially here in North America, is really just easily-digested consumable noise. But it doesn't have to be. As someone above pointed out, Quirks and Quarks is one such good example of a thinking-person's radio program, and others do exist, even if they're drowning in a sea of meaninglessness.

Quirks and Quarks is now also available via the CBC in a Podcasting form, along with a program called "/Nerd".

The CBC has been doing an excellent job of exploiting the types of technologies /.ers love recently. First providing radio stream in Ogg Vorbis format, and now Podcasting. Cool :).

Yaz.

http://radio.cbc.ca/programs/quirks/

This Canadian radio show has been running weekly since at least 1988, and covers a broad range of science news. I find they rarely dumb down their news, and often they will cover obscure and very interesting areas of research that you just won't hear about anywhere else in the news.

The website supports podcasting, realaudio, and you can download every weekly episode since 1988 right from their website. Pretty cool when you think about it.

This is definately superior news for the science nerd.

As a bonus, you can even get it in Ogg.

yo.

Here is a picture of the greatest canadian heroine: Marg The Warrior Princess

This is the first I've heard of that. Link please.

Do you remember when the Abu Ghraib story broke? It was April 28, 2004. General Taguba finished his infamous report two months before that.

See the timeline.

I do not consider that situation was dealt with appropriately.

What would have been appropriate?

I would like to restate that to say that the wanted to act, regardless of evidence, and was willing to act unilaterally.

"Regardless of evidence" is opinion. We could talk for a long long time about the reasons why the U.S. went to war. As to willingness to act unilaterally: yes, of course. This is a given, in all situations. The U.S. is and should always be willing to act unilaterally when its own security interests are at stake.

Any President not willing to act unilaterally in defense of U.S. security interests is not fit to be President, because he would not be upholding the Constitution, which gives him the obligation to defend the nation. Clinton acted unilaterally when he bombed Baghdad in 1998; Bush never acted so unilaterally.

The question is not willingness to act unilaterally. The question is whether the war itself was justified, unilaterally or not.

CBC will be airing the first episode on April 5th.

1 in 5 Americans have binged in alcohol recently

1 in 5 Americans have some form of disability

1 in 5 Canadians fell asleepat the wheel

1 in 5 computers is infected with some kind of virus or trojan"

Dating violence affects 1 in 5 teenage girls

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This message has been recommended by 4 out of 5 dentists

If you really want to experience something amusing, bush your teeth with one of those powerful, pulsating electric toothbrushes while trying to read a CRT monitor.

Watch as the illusion of reality that your brain creates for you breaks down as it hits an edge-case of monitor refresh + head vibration that a few hundred thousand years of hunter-gathering never equipped you for.

Of course, once you start here, you might want to explore other mind hacks that are also available to you.

It's like the CBC, except not nearly as good...

There was an article on cbc.ca last year which talked about a court ruling relating to file sharing in Candad. Here's a quote:

[quote]
The ruling stipulates that:

• Downloading a song for personal use is not an infringement.
• Placing a song in an on-line music-sharing directory such as Kazaa is not considered distribution.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/internet/downloa ding_music.html

Listening to http://www.cbc.ca/, I've heard some pretty interesting music, from a Swiss yodel/alpenhorn duo that sounds remarkably techno to http://www.gjallarhorn.com/, published in North America by http://www.noside.com/, who handle many Scandinavian acts, including Wimme and http://www.cabal.se/silence/hedningarna/index1.htm l, a remarkable group that pushes the boundaries of folk music.

Hedningarna's song "Min Skog" sounds like someone managed to teach Ozzy Osbourne how to sing in Suomi and operate a chainsaw at the same time. For the longest time, the _only_ way I could obtain this was through services like WinMX (Kazaa? *shudder*)because it took me a while to find a retailer that would bring this remarkable music in. Oddly enough, it was http://www.absound.ca/ that could get it in. Turns out, they have a really good, if rather small, world music and jazz section. So if you talk to them _real_ nice, and try not to smell too bad, they'll get in some real cool music for you.

• But the profits come at a deadly price. At least 150 people have died during the eight-year turf war between the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine. While Canadians were aware of the biker war, few cared until the death of 11-year-old Daniel Desrochers. He died when a bomb exploded outside a biker hangout.

CBC News just reported about 4000 small earthquakes about 200km off the west coast of Vancouver Island, none no more than 5.x on the Richter scale.

They believe this may be related to the growth of a new underwater volcano, and hope to see it's initial erruption. This is almost certainly connected to the eruption at Mt. St. Helens, and I suspect related to the large earth quakes in south-east asia in December.

Here you go: http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2005/03/07 /cold-sentence050307.htm

"Canada has signed an agreement with the US to halt what has been called asylum shopping - refugees who have been denied or think they will be denied asylum in one country, then crossing the border to apply in the other."

That has absolutely nothing to do with draft dodgers. What it does is stop overseas refugees from entering the United States and then crossing the border into Canada to claim refugee status, or vice versa. In that case the refugee claimant would be sent back to the first country, where they are still eligible to make a claim. The goal is to streamline the refugee process, not send back draft dodgers.

During the Vietnam war, Canada essentially decided that disagreements between a state and its citizens over compulsory military service was not Canada's problem. Since no Canadian law was broken, deportation was not an option. In the end, over 40,000 Americans sought sanctuary in Canada. A pardon was eventually granted by Carter for everyone except deserters. A good video collection on draft dodgers is hosted by the CBC.

That reminds me of Gerard Bull, an artillery engenieer - notorious for the alleged design of a "supergun" for Iraq a couple years ago. He was killed, supposedly by the Mosaad.

Anyway, he had a dream of a huge cannon for launching space cargo - either off the atmosphere by itself or with the help of rockets, but with incredible savings in fuel and launch costs. The Iraqies, of course, wanted it for military purposes. IIRC (saw it on tv a good while ago), it could place a payload of 200kg in orbit at US$600/kilo. They actually started building it, until the first Iraq war happened.

If you live near the Canadian border, the CBC is supposed to be broadcasting it.

CBC Program Guide

This polygamist community, which is part of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, has lived in British Columbia for well over fifty years. Its history can be traced back to the Mormon community in Utah. When the official Mormon Church banned polygamy in 1890, authorities stepped in and began to round up and jail those who openly defied the edict. A splinter group wanting to practice polygamy fled into the desert and established a settlement that came to be called Colorado City on the Utah/Arizona border. Another group traveled up to Canada and set up a polygamist community near the present day town of Cardston, Alberta. In Canada, Ottawa declared polygamy a criminal offence and in time their lifestyle began to disappear.

--jeff++

Also FYI (37,000 km) / (67 hours) = 343.145285 mph ... pretty darn fast considering they were expecting an average of 285mph.

There actually was a case back in 1983 when they loaded a Boeing 767 up with X pounds of fuel when it should have been X kilograms so they were short by a factor of 2.2. Luckily the captain happened to be an experienced glider pilot.

Video and story here

But if you're a Canadian, you might have to renounce your citizenship to get peerage from the UK...

If this is for real (and I do trust Salon) this falls into the O.M.F.G. category. Someone slap me.

I recently listened to a documentary on CBC radio about pervasive irony in today's world. It was an interesting program because they were suggesting that the political scene these days is like a living satire. It's just too weird... and this news about a spyware marketer being appointed to a privacy committee is just insane. I see four fingers!

You are forgetting one thing: we need to compress the hydrogen gas from atmospheric pressure to tank pressure. This is a 50% energy cost. Half your solar cells are generating hydrogen, and the other half are compressing it.

Just to nit pick: the One Tonne Challenge doesn't quite count as "a plan". _If_ everyone in Canada was successful at this, the total reduction would be about 30 million tonnes, only a fraction of our commitment of more than 240 million tonnes.

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

I want to be optimistic, but we're going to need a lot more than some encouragement from Rick Mercer to get us to make major changes in our lifestyles. Whether it's tax incentives, or transportation system changes, big changes have to happen for long term reductions.

On top of that, there will need to be changes in most types of industry as I'm sure has been mentioned here many times, so let's not let our politicians off the hook that easily.

Never fear! Stephan Dion, Environment Minister, was on CBC radio today promising to come out with a plan soon.

DJ

Last night on CBC's The Hour, I believe David Suzuki came out and called the US a rogue nation.

This is a fair reflection of the developing consensus around the world. This has been especially notable after the US failed to support a world court.

What's most bizarre is that the US will end up losing out because of this. Japan is becoming a leader in solar, Germany and Denmark for wind. As prices become competitive against even natural gas, they will gain a tremendous advantage.

There are other examples, but those are just the most obvious. So much for another American century...

Ah: there's no global warming here on Earth, but NASA is proposing we cause it on Mars. Now I get it!

Police in Toronto say they tracked down the hotel after releasing photos from a porn site, showing the locations of sex attacks against a girl who was around 12 years old.

Pray tell, oh enlightened one, about trade barriers.

Very well, lets talk about Iraq, and the oil embargo, and how the US ignores barriers whenever it feels like it. Or how America (and other countries, America isn't alone in this) backs such barriers only when it benefits corporations, not consumers or laborers.

You forgot the softwood lumber tariffs, which both the WTO and NAFTA have ruled are illegal. And the US is considering raising the duty!

I don't know you managed to miss this story...

... and allowing them to be used as investigative tools (again with court orders) against terrorists

Substantial parts of the PATRIOT act can be used without any kind of court order. The 'sneak-and-peek' provisions can be carried out without the government ever telling you that you were searched or investigated.

The ACLU and EFF have pages up about the PATRIOT Act, and clearly show how the effects are not limited to "terrorists". (Unless, like Ashcroft, you feel that breasts and calico cats are weapons of mass destruction.)

More importantly, can you give me the number of people whose civil liberties have *actually* been violated (N.B. not those who "felt" they were violated) under specific provisions of the PATRIOT Act?

Not easily, because it's secret. I can certainly say that Maher Arar had his civil liberties violated, but since the US government won't talk about it, it's hard to say whether it was PATRIOT-related or just plain extra-legal.

Of course, you may feel that using the PATRIOT act against pot-smugglers is excessive.

"Thankfully, privacy still means something up here."

Oh, really? Is that why you have to register every gun in the country with the Canadian government or face charges?

http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2003/06/30/gun_registry0 30630/

Those "ironmen" are lightweights compared to this guy.

One factor in common to all these empires is that their citizens at the time generally didn't perceive themselves as being part of an empire! The effect doesn't necessarily require a campaign of disinformation, in other words. Though it helps further the effect.

Being a Canadian, I get to watch the workings of the American Empire from a ringside seat. It's both heartbreaking and encouraging. The very fact that we can have this discussion is fantastic. There is room in American culture for both diversity and an extremely generous spirit of inquiry. But at the same time, there seem to be some very strange limits to that inquiry, one in particular being any reference to empire and its damaging effects on nationhood and culture, another being genuine confusion at any news that the world doesn't welcome the imposition of empire.

Of course it's easy to see the US Administration as the bad guys, not truly representative of the American people. But there is a sociological dimension underneath this as well, which is what makes it possible. In that sense this Administration is representative of American values, and that, from an outside perspective at least, is the truly scary dimension of this particular global empire.

here and here and here.

All of these talk about NPP (net production). On the NASA image, it the relative picture is misleading since there is not that much NPP in the tundra or deserts!

Anyway, the 50% is not made up. 50% of all land plant growth equievelence seems close to being accurate. The oceans are quite baren now (and the volume of the Pacific is equal to the volume of the Moon). Now that China is getting fat, we can only see the NPP skyrocket (meat calorie production requires about 9x plant calorie input).

As someone said, "People are not pigs. People will eat anything".

The $2 billion (CAD) Canadian Gun Registry system fiasco makes the $170 million FBI software failure look like a walk in the park. ($2B CAD works out to $67 CAD for every Canadian). It's good to see the the Americans keep their government accountable to its citizens. In Canada it is the complete opposite - this type of project is commonplace - and what is even more alarming is that the Canadian voter keeps re-electing the same politicians that created this mess in the first place. A classic case of getting what you deserve.

The following text explaining the problem is an exerpt from this website:

And why were there cost overruns? "From the start of the business process and technological development of the CFP, EDS and SHL Systemhouse (subsequently acquired by EDS), responding to requirements defined by the CFP project management, performed a large number of changes (1997-319 changes; 1998-310; 1999-474; 2000-415; 2001-260; and, 2002-112) leading to a CFP technical solution that had rapidly evolved from seemingly straightforward to very complex."

In other words from the beginning the IT companies controlled the whole process, they provided the hardware, developed the software and data processing, and maintained control over it leasing it back to the government. Every time a change was made a charge was issued, driving up the operational costs of the CFC and the CFP. The costs were in the millions, and the government still did not own the hardware, software or data, this was still the property of the IT company.

And the reason these costly changes were required? "The Canadian Firearms Registration System information technology was modified several times before and after licensing and registration began in December 1998. The technology was developed in parallel with repeated changes to Program forms, rules, and processes and before legislation and regulations were finalized. The Department stated that the complexity of the system increased unnecessarily because many of the design assumptions were invalid; the system was intended to capture detailed information about firearms for criminal investigations and process licence and registration applications; however, the information needed for criminal investigations was well beyond the administrative needs of the Program; and small changes, such as modifications in data entry on a form, required major changes in the whole system because of its size and complexity, and these changes typically took three to six months to implement at a cost of millions of dollars."

So the Justice Department created a system that was not just simply about Canadian registering their guns but also an attempt to track gun ownership for police purposes. This was the underlying problem with the IT program. And they left the creation of this overly complex database to EDS and SHL Systemhouse. That system instead of being adaptable became a very expensive white elephant.

"In 2001, the Department told the Government that the three-year-old Canadian Firearms Registration System was not working well; its technology was expensive, inflexible, out-of-date, and could not be modified at a reasonable costs to support future operations. Construction and maintenance costs of the existing system were exceptionally high and without radical change, these would represent over 60 percent of future operating costs. This would be significantly higher than the industry norm of 10 percent to 20 percent."

Refer to the website above for more details.

America learns to play nicely with others, a key ingredient in any kind of cooperation and/or alliances. And given the population difference between Asia and the U.S., the U.S. will have to make alliances.

Exactly, there's no justification for saying that the Canadian government is out of line here when the US goes and pulls this BS.

you could try the BBC.

The BBC is great! I even tend to watch BBCWorld on satelitte TV instead of the usual US Channels.

Another a bit closer to (US) home : http://www.cbc.ca/