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On the plus side Harper's government has lost more SCC rulings than any other one that I can remember.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

That makes me happy.

It's not the cash-cow speed traps and Officer Dickweed hiding behind your neighbor's azaleas with a laser gun that I'm worried about. It's the mindless, shoot-first cops that are determined to become a leading cause of death to unarmed civilians despite supposedly safe weapons.

Maybe cops need a sensible, community-minded mission in a media friendly format? "Serve and Protect", maybe, or "We're tackling real criminals now instead of the harmless pot smokers".

We have plenty of reasons to hate cops, from racially-motivated shootings to blatant theft and rage murder, these incidents happen many thousands of times every year. If they want to change I'm all for it but in the meantime let me know where these trigger happy fuckers are so I can avoid them. I believe believe in personal safety, freedom to possess property and the inviolable rights of every human being. That's why I feel justified in helping highlight gang members with badges on Waze. Think of the children (AKA collateral damage) please folks.

If ISIS were the only example you'd have a point. But then its all over the place.

And I'll note further that the elements in Turkey, Kurdistan, and Egypt that are fighting against these people agree with me that Islam needs to reform.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

I am in good company with facts at my back. You've got nothing on me.

Nah, you're just ignorant and intolerant of new ideas. Ironically, you're the bigot because you're prejudged me without understanding anything.

Allow me to open your beady little eyes:

That is the president of Egypt agreeing with me:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Guess he's a bigot too, huh? Shit for brains :D

And here is an example of what is going on in many of these mosques since you're apparently fucking clueless:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Notice all the moderate muslims raising their hands agreeing with death penalities for various infractions against their religion? Yeah. Maybe the real difference is that when they mean moderate, they don't mean something tolerant of western values but something rather where they'd be less inclined to actually kill them personally. But they sure as hell approve of it apparently.

And because you're pretty fucking thick, lets get some stats from the Pew polling service. I have other ones from both Pew and Gallup if you'd like:
http://www.pewglobal.org/2010/...

So you see, shithead? You're wrong. Suck it. Suck it long. Suck it hard.

There are gender differences; you don't see it so much in ability scores, but you do tend to see it in how boys and girls learn. There are, I believe, some advantages for separating boys and girls for some classes, but certainly not all. The tricky bit, however, is that, on an individual basis, some kids simply don't fit the gender stereotypes. Some girls like being hands-on and active; some boys prefer to get their answers from reading and watching.

In a perfect world, you'd pair the right kid with the right teaching method, but that's not always possible, so you make compromises ... like gender-specific classes -- which can also help boys in some cases. FWIW, a couple years ago, news and infotainment stories based on all-boys programs were all the rage in Canada (specifically that elementary school education had become too feminized with too many female educators), so, while the current media frenzy is focusing on girls' achievements, there is a degree of parity in the overall arc of the coverage.

As for the current controversy, Google and MS aren't in the business of being SJWs; they're in the business of making money. And the research strongly suggests that:

The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.

Source (with cursory review of the literature): http://www.theglobeandmail.com... Note: Credit Suisse is not some backwater, liberal college spouting pseudo-scientific gibberish; they're a well-run capitalist organization that makes no bones about being in it for the money.

You want people with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences working together. It might take longer to reach a decision (or finish a project), but it's likely that the decision will be better for it. Monocultures are suboptimal for decision making (the research from WWII on is quite solid on this). Google and Microsoft are not pushing forward with trying to get more girl coders from some sense of goodness and charity; they're doing it because they see a business case for it. The gender equity aspect is veneer slapped over a business decision to make it 1.) seem like a good thing for society and 2.) make it easier to shake money loose governments to improve their own workforces.

In my opinion, it is very positive for us to have high educated and motivated individuals working here.

They won't be working long-term in Canada. FTFA:

The government notice says the new training and development centre will focus on "software and engineering." The notice also says foreign workers will be given 24-month work permits to allow them to stay in Canada "until they are transitioned by Microsoft into a new position elsewhere.

That "elsewhere" is the US.

Karen Jones, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel, said the deal will allow Microsoft to bypass stricter U.S. rules on visas for foreign workers.

And that stripper program?

Earlier this year, Mr. Kenney announced that employers with good reputations would be allowed to fast track the hiring of temporary foreign workers and be allowed to pay them 15 per cent less than the average wage for a particular job. Labour groups and the NDP opposition slammed the move, accusing the Conservatives of driving down wages on behalf of employers.

Same crap, different day.

The ruling also said that, even if the evidence was obtained through an improper search of the phone, it's still admissible.

Fearon was convicted of armed robbery in a 2009 Toronto jewelry heist. Despite finding the search of his phone wasn't reasonable and breached his rights, the Supreme Court said the search was done in good faith.

The court kept the evidence found in the phone — a photo of a gun and a draft text message referring to jewelry that said "We did it."

Excluding the evidence, the court found, would undermine the truth-seeking function of the justice system. The minority disagreed and would have excluded the evidence because it was unconstitutionally obtained.

This ruling is a cowardly conceit to the End justifying the Means. It does so by completely ignoring that those means will be used for all manner of ends and not just when clearly right. I can go wander into a crowd and shoot a machine gun. If I happen to kill all drug dealing murderers, does that make it right? Of course not. This is basically the same thing. Shoot someone, see if they were wanted and then justify the blind shot since he was wanted. If he wasn't wanted? Don't mention it, lather rinse and repeat.

Evidence should be excluded, even if a bad guy gets away, because the cops need to follow the f-ing rules.

Basically, a bad guy got caught red handed because the cops broke the rules. Shows like 24, much less the real cops and prosecutors will never bring to trial the obviously innocent guy they arrested for clearly false reasons and expose themselves under that circumstance. They'll drop charges, offer a plea to time served and all sorts of other cons to make themselves look good.

24 never had Keifer Sutherland beats a guy we, the audience, knew was innocent. Never showed an innocent man, at age 25 in 2014, being beaten until he confessed to killing JFKennedy, sinking the Titanic and whatever story of the week needed a confession. They don't show that shit. The closest I've ever seen was "The Shield" (great show btw) where they did torture an "innocent" guy, but the guy was only innocent of the specific crime he was being tortured for - he was a murderous drug kingpin thug and not sympathetic on any other level.

Fearon was convicted of armed robbery in a 2009 Toronto jewelry heist. Despite finding the search of his phone wasn't reasonable and breached his rights, the Supreme Court said the search was done in good faith.

The court kept the evidence found in the phone — a photo of a gun and a draft text message referring to jewelry that said "We did it."

Excluding the evidence, the court found, would undermine the truth-seeking function of the justice system. The minority disagreed and would have excluded the evidence because it was unconstitutionally obtained.

We've been doing unintentional geoengineering for hundreds of years now, why would some intentional geoengineering be so bad?

Because it might allow us to continue with global trade, industrial capitalism and rising prosperity.

Show me any practical, proven technology whose wide-spread deployment would significantly reduce GHG emissions and I will show you a green activist group vehemently opposed to it.

Wind: http://www.energyenvironmental...

Solar: http://www.kcet.org/news/redef...

Hydro: http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

And of course Nuclear: http://www.nationaljournal.com...

Some people will claim that green activists aren't opposed to all these (and other) technologies per se but rather to these specific projects... and yet there is in fact opposition to every single specific project of sufficient scale or scope to make a difference, so that is clearly false. It is simply not plausible that every single project regardless of technology just happens to be so bad for the Earth it is worthy of vigorous opposition, unless you're against industrial capitalism, global trade and rising prosperity regardless, in which case you should just be honest and say so, and stop with all the irrelevant distractions about the climate.

Green activists are like anti-contraception activists: they believe their target activity (industrial capitalism/sex) is bad in and of itself, and cannot ever be made good, but they disingenuously and dishonestly claim that they are opposed to it because of its potential negative consequences... and then do everything they can to prevent anyone from ameliorating those consequences.

GA: "Global warming is bad! We must shut down industrial capitalism!"

Technologist: "Hey, I can fix things so industrial capitalism wouldn't cause global warming."

GA: "We must not do that!:

Tech: "Why not?"

GA: "Because industrial capitalism is bad!"

Tech: "How come?"

GA: "Because it causes global warming!"

Tech: "But I just showed you how we can avoid that."

GA: "We can't! You're lying! It's a trap! Industrial capitalism can't be made good because it's bad!"

Tech: "Fuck you. I'm going to go ahead anyway."

GA: goes away muttering, waving copy of Malthus...

"But Toronto doesn't have a "strong mayor" like many American cities."

But it did have one just as corrupt as any american big city mayor...\

Not true.

For all of Rob Ford's many faults (incompetence, buffoonery, substance abuse, etc), corruption isn't one of them.

In fact, Rob Ford was sued for libel when he complained about a corrupt city deal for a 20-year contract that never went to public tender as required by law.

Rob Ford was ultimately victorious, and awarded legal costs:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2012/12/27/rob_ford_libel_trial_judge_dismissed_6m_lawsuit_against_toronto_mayor.html
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/defamation-lawsuit-against-rob-ford-thrown-out-by-judge/article6752053/

And Rob Ford won on appeal:

http://toronto.ctvnews.ca/rob-ford-defamation-lawsuit-victory-upheld-by-appeal-court-1.1904082

Oh, like TransCanada / Keystone XL Pipeline is trying to do...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

The main Ebola drugs/vaccines that are in play were developed in Canada at the publicly funded National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some money came from private companies, but much was public funds; and who paid for the lab in the first place? (That's a rhetorical question if you didn't get it.) Level 4-containment microbiology labs aren't cheap, it's why there are only a handful in the world and why they are publicly funded, not privately... there is normally no profit in them. I am one who has no problem pointing out the folly and poor performance (it has hurt me personally) of Canada's "public only" healthcare system. I like the public/private funding paradigm that Europe seems to have and which Obamacare seems to be moving towards, and would like to see that adopted here (that is another topic altogether). But I am very against the "private only" healthcare system that many fake Christians in the U.S. want. I have seen it hurt too many people. And this is also a case where we can see that private isn't always better either.

Next question?

The main Ebola drugs/vaccines that are in play were developed in Canada at the publicly funded National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Some money came from private companies, but much was public funds; and who paid for the lab in the first place? (That's a rhetorical question if you didn't get it.) Level 4-containment microbiology labs aren't cheap, it's why there are only a handful in the world and why they are publicly funded, not privately... there is normally no profit in them. I am one who has no problem pointing out the folly and poor performance (it has hurt me personally) of Canada's "public only" healthcare system. I like the public/private funding paradigm that Europe seems to have and which Obamacare seems to be moving towards, and would like to see that adopted here (that is another topic altogether). But I am very against the "private only" healthcare system that many fake Christians in the U.S. want. I have seen it hurt too many people. And this is also a case where we can see that private isn't always better either.

Next question?

So ... here's an article from the Globe and Mail, http://www.theglobeandmail.com... .

Research first reported in Science Magazine regarding the contribution of women to the collective intelligence of a team garnered worldwide attention, particularly the studies highlighting the performance of women when tested on tasks relating to brainstorming, complex problem-solving and decision-making. The findings confirmed that a group’s collective intelligence was strengthened by the inclusion of women and their enhanced capacity for listening, collaborating and intuitiveness. The CIA is one example of an organization that made a notable transformation of its culture by not only ensuring women had greater representation in senior positions, but also explicitly recognizing that it was women on their team who discovered the location of Osama Bin Laden, allowing for him to be captured.

You want men and women working together. Simple as that.

The business case goes like this:

The financial benefits of greater gender equity are undeniable. Extensive global research conducted by Credit Suisse, Catalyst and McKinsey & Co. examining the link between women on boards and stronger financial performance of Fortune 500 companies has been cited in numerous publications. Examining the return on sales, return on invested capital, and return on equity, their research confirmed that companies with women on their boards of directors outperform those with the least number of women by significant margins in each category.

Credit Suisse is not exactly some radical feminist organization out to overthrow patriarchy.

Yeah, I wonder about this. It's extremely hard to come up with numbers. You typically end up with specific cases hitting the news in chunks, like this: http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Then there's my own anecdotal evidence from copper mining, where my friend left his management position at one Canadian mining company shortly after a Chinese company acquired 51%, only to have another Chinese company buy a 40% stake in the next company he ended up at. Now he's waiting for the other shoe to drop, when the additional 11% acquisition quietly happens with no press. I've heard the same stories in every natural resource sector I know people in, but I just spent an hour googling this, and I can't find any top line number for just how much of Canada is actually owned by China. I suspect it's truly shocking.

This exactly describes the situation in our company. The Indians have no initiative, no desire to learn things off the clock. They ignore production alerts until they pile up and then look for somebody else to blame. They ignore everything. They are uncreative and cannot come up with any solution to save their lives. I have had to deal with this in various companies over the last 15 years. They are just stupid and useless. They all want us to believe that Indians are smart but where is the evidence? If you research it, you discover that Indians universities are rife with cheating and when they come to universities in the US, they are terrible cheaters.
In short, that is the Indian way and that is one reason that India itself is such a total shithole.

In NYC, we had a terrible problem with Indians in that they never flushed their own toilets and often pissed on the toilet seats, as if they were high caste and expected someone else to do it. Their code was just as sloppy and slapdash. Every company I have worked for eventually gets the picture that they are terrible workers, stupid and not worth even the piddling money they earn. I have been gratified to see them driven out of every company I work for. It's a damned relief.

This is far too politicized to be judged scientifically anymore.

The problem is that Warmists have politicized the science almost from the word "go". You can tell this because prominent political organizations like Greenpeace say on the one hand that climate change could be a civilization-ending event, and on the other hand we must not ever even think about using nuclear power to solve it, even though nuclear is the only proven, sustainable, economic and practical alternative to coal (this is even more true since the Japanese demonstrated practical extraction of uranium from sea water.)

Greenpeace says the only acceptable solutions to the problem of ACC are reduced consumption, de-industrialization, and various command-economy initiatives of a kind that would represent a massive expansion of government control. This is not surprising, because Greenpeace is a far-left political organization with no interest in the environment whatsoever (it was founded as a science-based organization, but changed to politics after a few years when some of its leaders recognized that politics was a lot more lucrative.)

So having made "the solution equal to the problem" in the public discourse, Leftist political organizations are now upset that Rightwingnutjobs are denying there is a problem. The rightwingers aren't responding to the science, they are responding to the Left's insistence that if there is a problem, it only has far-left solutions. That's obviously stupid (what the Righties are doing) but hardly surprising. Politics has always been a game of power and opposition, and the Right is taking the role of opposition in this case.

Me, I care primarily about the science, and defending the integrity of science from both sides. I acknowledge ACC is a problem, and I've arranged my life so my carbon footprint is tiny. I work at home in a mild climate, don't drive, almost never fly, etc. I support carbon taxes because the data show pretty clearly they work and have some nice side benefits, like reducing CO2 emissions. By "they work" of course I mean "they work to reduce income taxes and corporate taxes", which surely anyone who isn't some socialist nut-job would be in support of. But I also support the development of nuclear power and research into geo-engineering, because it would be utterly evil to believe we are risking the end of industrial civilization and not be open to all possible solutions.

But because the issue has been politicized since the '80's, I get accused of being a Denialist by Warmist nutjobs. It isn't enough that I agree a) there is a problem and b) support some economically defensible solutions. I have to quack the mantra of "the science is settled" (which it isn't and never can be) and "97% of climate scientists agree!" (which they don't and it's irrelevant) or I'm the enemy.

If Warmists cared about science, they would discuss the science, and reasonable policy alternatives. Instead, they rally people against pipelines and oppose nuclear power and complain that the science has become politicized, to which I say: they have only themselves to blame.

Coal use is leveling off in China this year.
http://m.greenpeace.org/eastas...

Coal use should drop in china:
http://america.aljazeera.com/a...

Coal mines are closing:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Jane Q doesn't believe in the free market. Doesn't like the facts so dismisses them.

"Reinsurers and insurers lose money when they misjudge risks that come back to bite them. To reduce their own risk profiles, the insurers have to become expert at matching the premiums to the estimated risk. Charging too little for, say, flood risk in a region that is becoming flood-prone is bad business. Equally, charging too much for premiums on natural catastrophes that are not on the rise, like earthquakes, is bad business because it scares away potential insurance buyers." - http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Also doesn't like the facts about Sept-11 or Obama's birth certificate, so dismisses them (but don't call him a birther or truther!). No point in arguing. no contrary fact is ever considered - just dismissed.

You should read earlier comments. We've covered this ground already. I have deep experience in this subject. The re-insurance companies take risk from insurance companies world wide.

The point is this: "No climate-change deniers to be found in the reinsurance business". This conversation is not about the nature of re-insurance but about their view of the risk inherant in global climate change. They view it as a serious risk and so do insurance companies.

So are you really trying to suggest that corporate lobbying is pushing insurance companies to fake that climate change is real? Are you kidding me? There is real money on the table. Let's look at the companies with the real risk on the table: the Re-Insurance companies--the ones that backstop the primary insurance market: "No climate-change deniers to be found in the reinsurance business".

These are huge corporations with shareholders and greedy owners. They don't screw around. They don't have to prove anything to anybody--they insure the insurance companies themselves. Even they--the Re-insurance companies believe that climate change is a real problem.

Shakespeare had a good phrase for your objections, Jane: "Methinks thou dost protest too much" .

Independent technology analyst Carmi Levy said the new unit reinforces the fact that Blackberry's days primarily as a handset vendor are behind it as it moves "very aggressively" toward a different business.

"This is probably the most tangible evidence yet of the company's transition into something very different than it was even a year or two ago," Levy said.

"It suggests they are no longer as dependent on handset-based revenue as they once were and as a result they have both the financial foundation as well as the corporate organizational confidence to more concretely move away from those lines of businesses into areas that are largely based on its intellectual property."

He said the move was positive for Blackberry, noting that it has struggled with its product launches and faced stiff competition from other smartphone makers while it has received little credit for its range of capabilities, especially when it came to software.

We've seen this story before - a company decides to concentrate on software and services, and sells off their hardware lines. IBM and Lenovo with PCs, and now with servers, should ring a bell.

Blackberry moving all their IP into a separate business unit is the logical way to get ready to sell off their phone division for the maximum return. People have known for years that Blackberry was in trouble. Just look at their market share (but you might need a microscope - it's worse than WinPhone). Everyone I know who had a crackberry has switched away. It's why blackberry took $965 million in writedowns on their unsold inventory of Z10 phones. They can't even sell them at cost.

Or you might want to read what the Globe and Mail had to say almost a year ago in "Inside the fall of BlackBerry: How the smartphone inventor failed to adapt." Here's just a part of it:

But smartphone users were rapidly shifting their focus to software applications, rather than choosing devices based solely on hardware. RIM found it difficult to make the transition, said Neeraj Monga, director of research with Veritas Investment Research Corp. The company’s engineering culture had served it well when it delivered efficient, low-power devices to enterprise customers. But features that suited corporate chief information officers weren’t what appealed to the general public.

“The problem wasn’t that we stopped listening to customers,” said one former RIM insider. “We believed we knew better what customers needed long term than they did. Consumers would say, ‘I want a faster browser.’ We might say, ‘You might think you want a faster browser, but you don’t want to pay overage on your bill.’ ‘Well, I want a super big very responsive touchscreen.’ ‘Well, you might think you want that, but you don’t want your phone to die at 2 p.m.’ “We would say, ‘We know better, and they’ll eventually figure it out.’ ”

Trying to satisfy its two sets of customers – consumers and corporate users – could leave the company satisfying neither. When RIM executives showed off plans to add camera, game and music applications to its products to several hundred Fortune 500 chief information officers at a company event in Orlando in 2010, they weren’t prepared for the backlash that followed. Large corporate customers didn’t want personal applications on corporate phones, said a former RIM executive who attended the session.

Meanwhile, it turned out consumers didn’t care so much about battery life or security features. They wanted apps. Apple’s iOs and Google’s A

Some counterpoints to your trolling.... (found simply by searching "blackberry ltd" on Google News):

• Blackberry Handset Sales Rising
• Blackberry in Catbird Seat as Encrypted Messaging Enters Mainstream
• BlackBerry Wins Gold in Best in Biz Awards 2014 International
• Blackberry Q2 Sales Rising
• Blackberry shares lead TSX
• BlackBerry nabs ‘perfect match’ in Germany’s Secusmart, burnishing anti-spying security credentials
• Blackberry Receives DISA Approval for Multi-Platform Management
• The top bullish move of Wynnefield Capital was boosting stake in BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) by over 60%

Some counterpoints to your trolling.... (found simply by searching "blackberry ltd" on Google News):

• Blackberry Handset Sales Rising
• Blackberry in Catbird Seat as Encrypted Messaging Enters Mainstream
• BlackBerry Wins Gold in Best in Biz Awards 2014 International
• Blackberry Q2 Sales Rising
• Blackberry shares lead TSX
• BlackBerry nabs ‘perfect match’ in Germany’s Secusmart, burnishing anti-spying security credentials
• Blackberry Receives DISA Approval for Multi-Platform Management
• The top bullish move of Wynnefield Capital was boosting stake in BlackBerry Ltd. (NASDAQ:BBRY) by over 60%

http://www.theglobeandmail.com... First thing that sprang to mind...

Right. So you are starting to understand that like most psychopaths, you have serious trouble telling what emotions other people are experiencing

Actually, research indicates that may be false. It's the charming people you have to watch out for. They might stab you in the back without ever changing their gorgeous smile.

As to why GP acts the way he does, I recommend Hanlon's razor.

The carbon tax in British Columbia seems to be working. http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

It was designed to be revenue neutral, though--I don't know enough about the Australian tax to compare the two.

That's extremely short-sighted. Eventually the economy wins because we have less of the pollution and other environmental damage from coal.

HAIL! And good greetings from the province of Ontairo! The land where we just finished taking our coal power plants offline, blew $1B not to build new gas plants because NIMBY's threw a fit. And pay anywhere between 40c/KwH to 83c/KwH to "green energy producers" to not produce electricity! This has driven up the cost of energy here by quite a bit, going by the latest projections we'll be paying upwards of 16c/KwH in the next few years. Enjoy those dreams of cheap electricity, because the businesses are fuckin' fleeing from here and the economy is dying.

I've never heard of your 'crippled plant' claim [...]

Here is an example for flax in Canada..

You're referring to an exceedingly small number of cases here. If you look at fuelly's numbers, only 55 out of 1879 Corollas tracked average more than 40 MPG (2.9%), while only 178 out of all 2930 Prii tracked get *less than* 40 MPG (6%). In the overwhelming majority of cases, the Prius gets better fuel efficiency than Corollas.

That, and the Prius' chief advantage is in city driving, which taxis operate in virtually exclusively. Since you're claiming Corollas beat them in their home environment, I call bullshit on your argument.

Not just city driving, but taxis do a lot more idling and waiting than a normal passenger car.

Stranger things have happened. Initially the city of Toronto failed to see as large of savings on Hybrid transit buses (seeing 10-20% vs. promised 20-30%), largely because they operated on suburban routes instead of stop and go urban routes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Waterloo and Ottawa have more computer scientists. but Tranna has the manufacturing infrastructure, so Cisco's announced that they're moving significant parts of the company there. The first phase is $100 million, out of a $4-billion investment in Ontario. and roughly 1,700 jobs. See http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Besides, many people fear CSE less than they do the NSA. After all, Canada's only been caught spying on Brazil, while the US was found spying on everyone on the planet (;-))

You're blaming railroads for a lot of things they have no control over:

• Railroads don't classify the goods being shipped, shippers do.
• Railroads can't refuse to take dangerous goods. They're classified as common carries and have to carry anything that's allowed by regulation, including hazardous materials.
• Railroads do own older, less safe equipment, such as older DOT-111 tank cars and can reasonably be blamed for spotting the cars they own to industries shipping volatile chemicals. However, they cannot refuse to move cars delivered from other railroads, or leased by the industries. Furthermore, the factories making replacement vehicles are backed up for two years. Even so, railroads are replacing the cars they own. They are being responsible.
• Most rail lines were built in rural areas, and the cities grew up around them. Don't blame the railroad when a city builds up next to a transportation corridor that transports dangerous goods. In the cases where railroads have rebuilt outside of cities, the cities have again crowded around the lines. What do you expect railroads to do? They were there first.

The solution is to put hydrocarbons (and other dangerous liquid goods) in pipelines that are statistically far safer. Pipelines, carrying one a single product, can be routed far away from urban areas. But those in power refuse to allow it, in cases stalling for over half a decade.

Or blame the shippers, who purposely make their shipments more volatile and mislabel the contents.

Railroads can be blamed for runaway trains, like the one that got away in Lac-Megantic (a train that had safely passed through Toronto earlier). Derailments happen, despite the best efforts to prevent them (they cost a lot of money, so no railroad wants them). But most of the blame for the explosive situations that have resulted cannot be placed on the railroads: their hands are tied.

The Globe and Mail did a story on it the other day. I took a few minutes to put in a longish comment, thinking this would be yet another right/left shoutfest.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

I dropped back a few hours later to see who'd called me a commie, only to see it only got a few comments and was dropped off the main page already - presumably because the web server had noticed almost nobody was reading it.

If people don't pay attention to government, the bad guys generally win.

A labour shortage you say? The hotest labour trend right now in Canada is Temporary Foreign Workers.

Take a look at some headlines from the past couple hours:
Pizza place faces federal grilling over temporary foreign workers
McDonald's foreign worker practices halted in face of investigation
PBO: Temporary Foreign Worker Program May Be Taking 1/4 Of New Jobs

You guys will never understand the RCMP. They're probably one of the last competent police forces on the planet, and the vast majority of Canadians respects them.

You gotta be kidding.

There was the incident of 4 armed RCMP officers who tasered some poor unarmed schlub FIVE times and killed him:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

And they lied about it and tried to cover it up by refusing to release the video.

Then there was the RCMP officer who kicked Buddy Tavares in the face. Tavares was complying with the police, he was unarmed, and had his hands on the pavement. Oh, and it was recorded on video.

http://thescottross.blogspot.c...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

There was the time the RCMP pepper-sprayed hapless protesters who were legally & peacefully protesting so that Suharto, the dictator of Indonesia wouldn't have to see them:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

And many many more.

Lots of women find themselves suddenly attracted to men who can have them imprisoned or killed if they act disinterested.

I thought you were joking until I found this link: North Korea executes leader's ex-girlfriend

If you are a careful driver and plan ahead to avoid quick braking, and also accelerate at a very modest rate your benefits would be small with this kind of system. It helps compensate for aggressive driving but it seems like it won't benefit drivers that already are trying to get good gas mileage.

I live in a modest coastal city where the traffic is relatively sedate. My main problem avoiding unnecessary use of the break pedal is that so many traffic lights appear suddenly as you crest a hill or exit a sweeping turn giving you no immediate indication of phase, and then BAM! just before the point of no return it goes yellow.

I pretty much make all my velocity decisions in phase space: how close in position/velocity to I wish to be with the traffic around me at which points in the terrain? I've read that gasoline engines are at the top of their conversion efficiency mound when producing about 2/3rds of maximum rated power, so I'm not shy about briefly laying it on to make a quick adjustment in phase space, but always with the goal of making the least possible use of my brake pedal later on.

Also, we've pretty much capped our top speed at 90 km/l since we're driving a small truck. We had a lovely Toyota Truck from way back that traded some paint at xmas. The smallest replacement truck we could find at a fair price is the ubiquitous Ford Ranger, which is a complete joke as representing a "small" truck.

The chicken tax: Why it's hard to find a small pickup truck

Fifty years ago, the United States slapped a 25 per cent tariff on imported brandy, dextrin, potato starch and small pickups. This was in retaliation to tariffs on imported American chicken imposed by countries like France and Germany.

To this day, the 25 per cent tariff on small pickups remains.

Sad news, ideologues. The entire electable spectrum has left the chicken tax alone, from Nixon to Bush to Clinton to Carter.

Countdown traffic lights may cause accidents, study says

Guess what? The carbon emissions also have a definite consequence. If not climate, then conflict. What's really going on here is escaping the horror of first order terms; it's an actuarial NIMBY effect. One death is a statistic. A billion deaths are somebody else's problem, if the coefficient can be construed as the least bit vague.

The real problem with countdown lights is that they require driver judgement. What you really want are a kind of runway light which indicates whether, from where you are—maintaining your current speed—you're going to make it through or not. The number the driver needs is dependent on individual conditions.

One way to do this would be to pot amber indicators in the pavement calibrated to the speed limit (it really should be called the "speed notice" or the "speed weed"—expect to be noticed/plucked if you drive faster than this). If you're driving at the speed limit, and the nearest such indicator in your forward path is illuminated amber, then you will arrive at the intersection in the amber condition.

If you gun it from 150 meters out from some low initial speed, you'll probably notice that you're losing the race with the amber rabbit in time to rethink your testosterone surge. If not, count on losing the long war of technological measures designed to strip you of your driving privilege. Driving stupidity/dead pedestrians breeds cameras. What part of this simple equation can't these people figure out?

This helps to explain the mysterious Flynn effect, where IQ is purportedly rising in the general population, but it's hard to see in real life. Nobody takes an IQ test sitting behind a steering wheel after rushing out of

The good news about being late to post stories (that aren't for nerds and don't matter), is that they've already been debunked:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Apparently you can get charged with money laundering though.

Water saving measures have drained funds from water taxes that are used to maintain the infrastructure...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

The smarter towns do what many other (often private) utilities do - have a line item for "fixed costs" and another for "usage". You get a fixed charge of $10-20 for access to the utility, and then a per watt-liter-whatever charge for usage. Even if you use NOTHING, that flat cost comes in every month.

Water billing is largely done on a city/village/town basis. Often, the water comes from a common-source (county 'water agency') which passes on costs to the smaller towns feeding off of it.

Now: if someone along the way mismanages it, that's a different problem.

Water saving measures have drained funds from water taxes that are used to maintain the infrastructure...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

This is affecting Canada as well, and according to one article, this may affect Canadian citizens as well even if they have never been US residents or citizens.

Could you imagine the uproar if (say) Iran threatened to trawl through US bank records for details on Iranian Americans? Totally disgusting. And yet the US can get away with it.

If you want to renounce the obligations of citizenship, you must also renounce the benefits of citizenship and officially naturalize as a citizen of another country. Seems fair to me.

Taxation is not an obligation of citizenship, it's an obligation of the consumption of government services. If you don't live in a country, you don't need the services of its government - you don't drive on its roads, you're not protected by its police, fire departments, etc. Civilized countries tax based on residency or source of income, not citizenship, and seem to have no trouble providing their citizens with embassies, consular services, and passports. Why not US?

The United States stands alongside the the shining example of Eritrea, (and even friggin' Eritrea only wants 2%) by taxing its citizens regardless of where they live.

Suppose every nation taxed based on citizenship instead of residency. Every bank on the planet would be responsible for vetting the citizenship of every customer, and keeping up with the taxation data reporting requirements of 190 sovereign nations. It doesn't scale, it costs more to enforce than it collects, and it invokes a huge negative externality by placing the burden of compliance on banks (with costs passed through to all of their clients) that may not even have international branches.

Civilized nations tax based on residency, not citizenship.

Canada makes polymer bills. The first polymer bill produced was the $100 CAD. Not too long after it was released, counterfeits were reported. This is a CBC story from May 2013. Too bad, for the longest time $100 and $50 paper bills weren't accepted at retail even if legal tender for fear it was counterfeit. Hopefully this doesn't happen with the new polymer bills.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

When we judge people only by the strength of their contributions, and give them equal opportunity to pursue the fields of their choice, then we have met our social obligation.

But until our expectations of others are truly equal, any answer to this question will simply reflect our own prejudices.

In societies where there is the most gender equality where feminism is crammed down everyone's throats their whole life and where women have the most opportunity to pick whatever career they want, where the government provides universal free daycare, even a smaller percent of women choose STEM fields. Sweden spent like the last 50 years working really hard to educate their youth that men and women are exactly equal (except for a few physical differences.) And yet, men and women have increasingly gone into more segregated career fields. It seems like gender expectations are not responsible for less women picking STEM fields. http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

This ain't any "Econ 101" "supply & demand" thing. There's plenty of natural gas around to the extent that it just get wasted:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Natural gas? Cheap and abundant.
Natural gas in pipelines flowing to New England power plants? Not so much.

If you don't understand how that would make a difference, it's likely you never took this Econ 101 you speak of. (That, or perhaps you think pipelines work by magic, and any mass flow rate through any size pipe is feasible from both engineering and economic perspectives? To put it in Ted Stevens-like terms, pipelines are like the internet, not like a truck.)

Not to say the natural gas market in New England is, or bears particularly close resemblance to, the elegant, efficient resource-allocation method modeled and taught in Econ 101, but your attempt to use the practice of gas flaring as evidence that there wasn't a genuine scarcity of usable natural gas in a certain place and time discredits you by revealing a serious failure in competence and/or honesty. (I wouldn't claim to know which.)

in nearly all states, collected gas tax doesn't actually get spent on roads

"[E]ven if [fuel tax] funds were fully devoted to highways, total user fee revenue accounted for only 65 percent of all funds set aside for highways in 2007."

Therefore, if we want the roads to start paying for themselves, we'll need to raise the gas tax, increase other taxes or fees, and/or allow some roads to return to nature so we no longer have to maintain them.

Because air pollution is proportional to the amount of fuel burned, the gas tax is a good way to pay for air pollution, which costs us up to $1,600 per person annually in medical costs, lost days of work, and so on. It's also the least bad way to pay for global warming. Ideally, the gas tax should also vary according to the quality of the vehicle's emissions system, because older cars pollute more per gallon of gasoline than newer cars.

But the gas tax isn't a good way to pay for road wear, which is proportional to the 4th power of the axle weight. For that we'd need a mileage fee that varies according to vehicle type or weight.

And the gas tax also isn't an effective way to manage traffic congestion, which varies by the hour and the location. For that, we would need some kind of congestion pricing such as variable express tolls or a mileage fee coupled with information about when and where you drove (but there are privacy concerns with that option).

So if the goal is for the roads to pay for themselves, then the most efficient and equitable way to achieve this goal in a capitalist society where people pay each according to the benefit they receive and the burden they place on the system, is with not just a gas tax but also some kind of mileage fee and congestion pricing. Then we could lower transportation sales taxes such as Prop K in San Francisco or Measure R in Los Angeles.

At least have the decency to mention the important thing the Harper government got RIGHT: Limiting the scope of how hard the CRIA can screw the individual downloader. We see HUGE penalties in the USA for poor people getting nailed for "copyright infringement" but at least in Canada Harper has limited that to $5,000CDN for "all infringements involved" so no-one has to lose their house over downloading a few songs to listen to at home. That is a HUGE benefit and protection to the average person here in Canada who just wants to listen to music. It also forces the music labels to leave the music lovers alone and go after the commercial infringers, since they can't exploit individuals as a "cash cow".

Also note that these copyright changes are all REQUIRED under international agreements that Canada is party to, so you can blame Harper all you want but no-one else could have done any different. IMHO, I think he got the best deal possible out of a crappy situation!

See: http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca...

(b) in a sum of not less than $100 and not more than $5,000 that the court considers just, with respect to all infringements involved in the proceedings for all works or other subject-matter, if the infringements are for non-commercial purposes.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

Fascists? Really?

Really. Instead of caring about things like human rights and serving the people of Canada, now the government only serves [some] businesses. A good example is diplomacy where we've historically pushed for more human rights. Well no more. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/tories-new-foreign-affairs-vision-shifts-focus-to-economic-diplomacy/article15624653/
This government is also doing the usual fascist things such as pushing nationalism, law and order where the idea is to expand the police state and considering anyone not agreeing with their policies re pipelines to be foreign radicals http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/radicals-working-against-oilsands-ottawa-says-1.1148310 and anti-truth, http://scienceblogs.com/confessions/2013/10/06/the-canadian-war-on-science-updates-to-the-chronology-of-the-conservative-governments-anti-science-actions/

Is schizophrenia on the decline in Canada?
The preliminary comparison showed a 42% decrease in the number of first-admission schizophrenia cases over 20 years. In the main study, the annual inpatient prevalence rates decreased significantly (52%) from 1986 to 1996 with no corresponding change in outpatient rates, regardless of sex. Although total major affective disorders increased, this was due to an increase in major depression, not bipolar disorder.
This is the first Canadian case-register study to support the widely reported falling rates of schizophrenia in other parts of the world over the last 40 years. Since this is a geographically limited prevalence study based on only 10 years of data, further research over longer periods of time in other regions of the country is required to support or refute these findings.

Canadian teens lead developed world in cannabis use: Unicef report
This is the second time in a row that the WHO study has ranked Canadian teenagers as the highest cannabis users, though the percentage of teens itself has dropped. In 2002, the same survey showed that 37.5 per cent of 15-year-olds in Canada had used cannabis in the past year.

Etc...