Not me, buddy. I was riding at a normal speed on a sunny September day about 25 years ago, and some kid who was stoned (I actually worked with him, and I knew he smoked dope every day after his shift) turned left, and plowed right into me. Broke my kneecap, and I had to have skin drafts. Even today, after 25 years, if I get down on my knees, I'm likely to tear the skin. It was hell on my sex life.
Today, I have an electric bike, and I ride it on the sidewalks.
I did do my research. I looked up a traffic engineering thesis from the University of Toronto, The guy was quite cogent, and listed six categories of road, from A to F. A is a super highway, F is a downtown city street, and each one has a different recommended speed limit. I also play golf with a couple of cops, and they told me on the 401 they don't stop anyone going under 120 km/h, when the limit is 100. So the cops know it's not unsafe to move a little more quickly. The lower speed limits were a politically motivated sop to the greens.
I think you have to work on your math skills. The loonie is worth 93 US cents. Even if US gas was $4 US/gallon, which it isn't, that would translate to $4.30 Canadian. At a more reasonable price of $3.49 US/gallon, it's only $3.75 Canadian. Better get that calculator fixed!
If you don't like it, the right way to do something about it is to get the highway department to resurvey the road and if the limit is improper it will be changed.
You're kidding, right? The double-nickel was brought in during the Carter administration, strictly to save gas. The speed limit here in Canada used to be 70 mph, and that was in cars with just lap belts, no anti-lock brakes, no crumple zones, and no airbags.
Traffic engineers have long recommended higher limits; when Montana had its "reasonable and prudent" speed limit, traffic fatalities actually fell. I used to drive from Toronto to Detroit every weekend; that's about 400 km. If, as the traffic engineers recommend, the speed limit outside of urban areas was raised to 130 km/hr, that would have saved me an entire hour. Speed is only a major death factor in young, male, inexperienced drivers; for older drivers fatigue was most often cited. If I could make the trip in 3 hours instead of 4, I would obviously be less fatigued. But our gutless politicians won't make the change because the green lobby would go ballistic.
From what I've heard, getting a driver's license in Germany is quite a chore; it's not like the US or Canada where you answer some simple questions, drive around the block, and show you know how to parallel park. We have some of the most inconsiderate and idiotic drivers here in North America.
Not me, though!
We're Canadian, but travel to the US fairly often. At a US Thanksgiving sale, we were able to buy two Virgin phones for $5 each. They are activated on Virgin US (and don't work in Canada), and we travel there often enough that it makes sense to keep them around and use them, instead of paying the exorbitant international roaming fees on our Canadian phones. I'd like to hear from some Europeans on what the situation is there if you travel from say, Germany, to France - do you have to pay extra fees?
"Most of the congestion in our modern airspace system is on the runway!"
Absolutely. Here in Toronto, every airline wants to advertise a 7:00 am departure to NY, Montreal, Chicago, Ottawa, and a few other destinations. The result? 30 planes waiting to take off at 6:59 am (they all push back then so they can be "on time"), but because of the wake issues you pointed out, and the paucity of runways (2 at any one time) at YYZ, some of those 7 am planes are going to sit on the runway until 8:00 am.
I've already commented, so I can't but would someone please mod parent up? I completely agree; a balance has to be found between the rights of individuals to do what they want with the music/movies they have purchased, and the rights of artists and recording companies not to have their works stolen. I also agree there needs to be some limit on the term of copyright, and not the infinitely extensible 75-year terms favoured by the Disney Corporation.
And let's give both the Liberals and the Tories some credit. Both parties, while in government, introduced DRM-type bills. This was in part to satisfy our WPO obligations. And both parties let the bills die on the order paper. If either one thought DRM was really important, or was in the pocket of the *AA's as has been suggested, it would have been a simple matter to bring the bill forward. That neither party did suggests to me they aren't really interested in seeing it pass, and would prefer to see the status quo (blank media levy, etc.) maintained, just as they maintain our technically illegal milk, egg, and poultry marketing boards.
Right. Canadian election finance laws do not allow for contributions from big business any longer, which is one reason the Liberals - who were the party of big business, just look at contributions before Chretien changed the law - are broke. The Tories raise all their money - lots of it - from individual Canadians, with the average contribution being, IIRC, $75. But you keep believing that the Tories are mean and in the pockets of business, and keep forgetting that the Liberals stole your tax dollars to pay their campaign expenses and still haven't paid it back.
The government did not "fall" - that is, it was not defeated in the House of Commons on a confidence measure. PM Stephen Harper is expected to request an election writ tomorrow, but the Governor-General is under no obligation to dissolve the house. She could ask the opposition parties if they could form a coalition government (unlikely, but possible), or she could refuse, and send Mr. Harper back to the House, where he could either dare the opposition to defeat him on a confidence measure (which would likely have to be a bill so contentious as to hand the opposition a ready-made election issue), or wait until Mr. Harper's own law which set an election date for late 2009 comes into effect.
Again, technically, once back in the House, Harper could introduce a confidence motion, and then ensure enough of his MP's were either absent or abstained so that he was defeated, but this would be so transparent that many Canadians would be annoyed, and not support him at the ballot box. Parliamentary democracy is so much fun!
Both of you are typical Canadians - whining brats who don't even bother to find out how our system of government works. You can DECLINE your ballot - that is, when the clerk hands you the ballot, you tell him/her you decline it. THESE HAVE TO BE RECORDED AS DECLINED - not spoiled, not blank, and not that you didn't even bother to show up.
And this is not a new law; it's been that way for over a hundred years. Canadians are so used to looking down their noses at "ignorant" Americans, but at least every American I've met has some idea of how their system of government works, unlike you snot-nosed clowns who clearly don't know a goddam thing.
Tribal dress designed to make the penis seem larger as well as tribal and primitive art depicting gods and kings with rather large penises.
Chinese woman bound their feet for centuries because small feet were deemed attractive. I remember pictures of African tribes where the women either wore rings to stretch their necks because long necks were considered attractive, or wore hoops to extend their bottom lips. And didn't Elizabethan men wear enormous "codpieces" to make themselves appear larger?
Nothing ever changes, really, except the technology used to deliver the illusion.
Maybe it would be easier to instead take out the tax on the goods the restaurants take in?
Well, that's not how the sales tax system works in Canada. Especially in Quebec, where the "Harmonised Sales Tax" (HST) combines the federal government's GST (which the Conservative government dropped from 7% to 5% - yay!) with the Quebec PST. Companies are allowed to deduct all the HST they pay on any inputs (there are a few small exceptions), collect the HST on everything they sell, and remit the difference. So, using simple numbers, a restaurant pays $1,000 per day for staff, food, soap, linen, etc., on which they pay 12% HST ($1,120 total). They collect $2,000 + HST for the meals they sell ($240 HST). So, they should be remitting $120/day. And note, this is not a cost to them; they were able to deduct all the HST they paid, and only remit the difference between what they collected from their customers and what they paid to their suppliers.
Now, these restaurants ARE charging the HST to their customers, but they're not paying it to the government, they're keeping it for themselves. If I were a taxpayer in Quebec, I'd be mighty pissed off if a 3rd party was ostensibly collecting tax money from me on behalf of the gov't, and then keeping it, especially if the gov't later came back and said it had to raise income taxes because HST revenue was less than expected.
So in this case, it's not just a fraud against the government; it's a fraud against the customer as well. As much as I dislike paying taxes, I dislike it even more when I think I'm paying taxes and it's going into a thief's pocket.
It's certainly a valid concern. The average life expectancy for American males is 75.15 years - right in McCain's first term
This where statistics are misleading; that figure includes all the men who died in teenage car accidents, gun fights, and 45 year old heart attacks. The more relevant figure is what is the life expectancy of a non-obese, non-smoking 70 year old American male, and the answer is just under 10 years. It's not at all inconceivable that McCain could die; as another poster pointed out, the stress of the job ages men quickly. Look at Clinton in 92 and then in 2000, or Bush in 2000 and 2008; both men who looked relatively robust and youthful when elected looked aged and drawn by the end of their terms. Frankly, I can't understand why anyone would want the job. Some of the perks (Air Force One, never having to wait in a traffic jam, and closing a runway at LAX while you get a haircut) are nice, but the endless demands on your time (forget cabinet meetings and so on - it's the banquets where you have to sit and smile at 3rd world thugs, the endless fund raisers, the pressure of having to respond to every problem as if you're the only who can solve it, the constant travel) - you can keep it.
What a pack of evasions. Recorded history to me means what people write, not fossils. I may have been off a few hundred years, but I'm not aware of any writings from 4,000 BC that have survived.
Why should primates evolve into homo sapiens? Because that's what evolutionary theory said happened. So why would that process suddenly stop? You guys are all about testability and detecting false data - so answer the damn question. Why did the process stop? Why aren't monkeys still evolving? If the process has stopped happening, your theory should have a reason. Let's hear it.
And bodies don't last? Well then, why do we have these fossils of hominids from 30-50,000 years ago, and dinosaur fossils from your 65 million years? Have bodies suddenly started deteriorating more quickly?
For climate data, check out climateaudit.org which IS run by a guy who has studied these issues extensively. Read his story about the Mann hockey stick, and how when Mann finally released his program, Steve ran different data sets through it, and got a hockey stick every time. Oh, and go and check - many people who signed the IPCC report are NOT climatologists, and the main author of the report admitted using scare tactics and suppressing dissenting opinions in the final draft. This link describes the lack of due diligence and review of the data, which is why I said it doesn't sound like science to me (that gets back to your testability and verification thing) http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66 As the author points out, billions of dollars of economic decisions are being made and no one is checking the damn data.
And of course, 1,000 years ago, long before CO2 was being dispensed in significant quantities, Greenland was actually green, according to Viking accounts. So if it happened before, why is it necessarily due to man's activity this time? And the reason I'm exercised about this is China has become the largest CO2 emitter in the world, but they get a complete pass on Kyoto, while I'm told I'm going to have pay more for oil and gas in Canada, where it gets pretty cold in the winter. I'll be damned if I'm going to do that while China pumps out ten times more CO2 than Canada does.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104091616.htm - 2008 is set to be the coolest year since 2000. It's still higher by a fraction of degree than the long term average, I'll admit, but there has definitely been a cooling trend the last few years.
Couldn't find the story I read on Antarctica, so I'll concede that point. I did read that a couple of floating ice sheets are in danger of breaking off. That's where icebergs come from, right? Google "Larson ice sheet" for any number of links - the scientists are predicting a rise in the ocean levels of anywhere from 6 to 20 feet if it breaks off. Let's see how that works out, 'kay? I'm willing to bet money we don't see anything like that.
And hey, I said I'd like my kids to be exposed to other creation myths and religious literature. I haven't read the Analects, but I have read the Tao, and find that it contains much wisdom as well. I wish I had more time and money to get English translations of other myths, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I waste a lot of time here.
Funny that GWB has a Yale undergrad degree and a Harvard MBA, but most people here call him stupid. Obama has a Harvard law degree, and suddenly he's a genius. Typical lefty hypocrisy.
I'm not sure if your comment about GWB doing a "cracker-jack" job in Texas is meant to be a compliment. In sports, to say a guy is a "cracker-jack" player is saying he's good. And GWB did do a good job in Texas. He raised education scores, and was able to get things done with a state legislature that was mostly Democratic.
On the other hand, you elected Bill Clinton, a governor of a state that had the lowest education scores in the nation and is not much bigger in population than Alaska. All he seemed to do in his time as governor was give nice speeches and have sex with women who were not his wife. I agreed with Ross Perot - EDS annual sales were bigger than Arkansas's GDP, and while Perot was a cantankerous old coot, I have no doubt he would have been a more effective chief executive than Clinton, who benefited from the peace dividend (which Reagan/Bush brought about), the technology boom (which he had nothing to do with, although Al Gore invented the Internet), NAFTA (which Reagan/Bush negotiated, and Clinton just signed) and the relentless cutting of interest rates by Alan Greenspan (which Clinton nominally had no control over). I guess this is why Clinton felt he had nothing better to do than have oral sex with young women.
Hillary Clinton made her own decision to run, managed the campaign, was the actual candidate.
Right. And if you read anything about the internal dissension on her campaign, she appears to have managed it quite badly. I can't recall where I read the article - I think it was this month's Atlantic Monthly (and it's available on-line at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/hillary-clinton-campaign) and the internal backbiting and bickering were documented in a number of emails. These were her own teammates, and they were telling tales on each other, leaking unflattering stuff about dissension to the media, and pulling the campaign into various different directions. She changed her manager mid-campaign, and sort of pulled her media adviser then got him back, which infuriated the other staff. As the article states, Clinton campaigned on competency and experience, and then proved she couldn't put together a cohesive team, or stick to a single strategy. One wonders what a shambles she would have made of her cabinet.
I just wonder where this reputation of competency comes from. She made a hash of her medical insurance plan, she claimed not to know her husband was cheating on her, etc. Her campaign was constantly in financial trouble. What exactly has she done?
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Not me, buddy. I was riding at a normal speed on a sunny September day about 25 years ago, and some kid who was stoned (I actually worked with him, and I knew he smoked dope every day after his shift) turned left, and plowed right into me. Broke my kneecap, and I had to have skin drafts. Even today, after 25 years, if I get down on my knees, I'm likely to tear the skin. It was hell on my sex life. Today, I have an electric bike, and I ride it on the sidewalks.
OK, but what is it in Libraries of Congress?
You're only off by about 2,000 miles. The oil sands are in Alberta, not Ontario.
I did do my research. I looked up a traffic engineering thesis from the University of Toronto, The guy was quite cogent, and listed six categories of road, from A to F. A is a super highway, F is a downtown city street, and each one has a different recommended speed limit. I also play golf with a couple of cops, and they told me on the 401 they don't stop anyone going under 120 km/h, when the limit is 100. So the cops know it's not unsafe to move a little more quickly. The lower speed limits were a politically motivated sop to the greens.
I think you have to work on your math skills. The loonie is worth 93 US cents. Even if US gas was $4 US/gallon, which it isn't, that would translate to $4.30 Canadian. At a more reasonable price of $3.49 US/gallon, it's only $3.75 Canadian. Better get that calculator fixed!
You're kidding, right? The double-nickel was brought in during the Carter administration, strictly to save gas. The speed limit here in Canada used to be 70 mph, and that was in cars with just lap belts, no anti-lock brakes, no crumple zones, and no airbags. Traffic engineers have long recommended higher limits; when Montana had its "reasonable and prudent" speed limit, traffic fatalities actually fell. I used to drive from Toronto to Detroit every weekend; that's about 400 km. If, as the traffic engineers recommend, the speed limit outside of urban areas was raised to 130 km/hr, that would have saved me an entire hour. Speed is only a major death factor in young, male, inexperienced drivers; for older drivers fatigue was most often cited. If I could make the trip in 3 hours instead of 4, I would obviously be less fatigued. But our gutless politicians won't make the change because the green lobby would go ballistic.
From what I've heard, getting a driver's license in Germany is quite a chore; it's not like the US or Canada where you answer some simple questions, drive around the block, and show you know how to parallel park. We have some of the most inconsiderate and idiotic drivers here in North America. Not me, though!
We're Canadian, but travel to the US fairly often. At a US Thanksgiving sale, we were able to buy two Virgin phones for $5 each. They are activated on Virgin US (and don't work in Canada), and we travel there often enough that it makes sense to keep them around and use them, instead of paying the exorbitant international roaming fees on our Canadian phones. I'd like to hear from some Europeans on what the situation is there if you travel from say, Germany, to France - do you have to pay extra fees?
No, I expect him to wiggle his butt.
My coat cost $29.95 at an outlet mall. How much are coats in your area?
Absolutely. Here in Toronto, every airline wants to advertise a 7:00 am departure to NY, Montreal, Chicago, Ottawa, and a few other destinations. The result? 30 planes waiting to take off at 6:59 am (they all push back then so they can be "on time"), but because of the wake issues you pointed out, and the paucity of runways (2 at any one time) at YYZ, some of those 7 am planes are going to sit on the runway until 8:00 am.
And let's give both the Liberals and the Tories some credit. Both parties, while in government, introduced DRM-type bills. This was in part to satisfy our WPO obligations. And both parties let the bills die on the order paper. If either one thought DRM was really important, or was in the pocket of the *AA's as has been suggested, it would have been a simple matter to bring the bill forward. That neither party did suggests to me they aren't really interested in seeing it pass, and would prefer to see the status quo (blank media levy, etc.) maintained, just as they maintain our technically illegal milk, egg, and poultry marketing boards.
Right. Canadian election finance laws do not allow for contributions from big business any longer, which is one reason the Liberals - who were the party of big business, just look at contributions before Chretien changed the law - are broke. The Tories raise all their money - lots of it - from individual Canadians, with the average contribution being, IIRC, $75. But you keep believing that the Tories are mean and in the pockets of business, and keep forgetting that the Liberals stole your tax dollars to pay their campaign expenses and still haven't paid it back.
Again, technically, once back in the House, Harper could introduce a confidence motion, and then ensure enough of his MP's were either absent or abstained so that he was defeated, but this would be so transparent that many Canadians would be annoyed, and not support him at the ballot box. Parliamentary democracy is so much fun!
And this is not a new law; it's been that way for over a hundred years. Canadians are so used to looking down their noses at "ignorant" Americans, but at least every American I've met has some idea of how their system of government works, unlike you snot-nosed clowns who clearly don't know a goddam thing.
And then your Mom answers the phone, and says "Just a moment, he's down in the basement..".
Chinese woman bound their feet for centuries because small feet were deemed attractive. I remember pictures of African tribes where the women either wore rings to stretch their necks because long necks were considered attractive, or wore hoops to extend their bottom lips. And didn't Elizabethan men wear enormous "codpieces" to make themselves appear larger?
Nothing ever changes, really, except the technology used to deliver the illusion.
Karma did.
Sure glad I didn't fall for.. oh those? They're not mine. Never seen them before.
Well, that's not how the sales tax system works in Canada. Especially in Quebec, where the "Harmonised Sales Tax" (HST) combines the federal government's GST (which the Conservative government dropped from 7% to 5% - yay!) with the Quebec PST. Companies are allowed to deduct all the HST they pay on any inputs (there are a few small exceptions), collect the HST on everything they sell, and remit the difference. So, using simple numbers, a restaurant pays $1,000 per day for staff, food, soap, linen, etc., on which they pay 12% HST ($1,120 total). They collect $2,000 + HST for the meals they sell ($240 HST). So, they should be remitting $120/day. And note, this is not a cost to them; they were able to deduct all the HST they paid, and only remit the difference between what they collected from their customers and what they paid to their suppliers.
Now, these restaurants ARE charging the HST to their customers, but they're not paying it to the government, they're keeping it for themselves. If I were a taxpayer in Quebec, I'd be mighty pissed off if a 3rd party was ostensibly collecting tax money from me on behalf of the gov't, and then keeping it, especially if the gov't later came back and said it had to raise income taxes because HST revenue was less than expected.
So in this case, it's not just a fraud against the government; it's a fraud against the customer as well. As much as I dislike paying taxes, I dislike it even more when I think I'm paying taxes and it's going into a thief's pocket.
This where statistics are misleading; that figure includes all the men who died in teenage car accidents, gun fights, and 45 year old heart attacks. The more relevant figure is what is the life expectancy of a non-obese, non-smoking 70 year old American male, and the answer is just under 10 years. It's not at all inconceivable that McCain could die; as another poster pointed out, the stress of the job ages men quickly. Look at Clinton in 92 and then in 2000, or Bush in 2000 and 2008; both men who looked relatively robust and youthful when elected looked aged and drawn by the end of their terms. Frankly, I can't understand why anyone would want the job. Some of the perks (Air Force One, never having to wait in a traffic jam, and closing a runway at LAX while you get a haircut) are nice, but the endless demands on your time (forget cabinet meetings and so on - it's the banquets where you have to sit and smile at 3rd world thugs, the endless fund raisers, the pressure of having to respond to every problem as if you're the only who can solve it, the constant travel) - you can keep it.
Why should primates evolve into homo sapiens? Because that's what evolutionary theory said happened. So why would that process suddenly stop? You guys are all about testability and detecting false data - so answer the damn question. Why did the process stop? Why aren't monkeys still evolving? If the process has stopped happening, your theory should have a reason. Let's hear it.
And bodies don't last? Well then, why do we have these fossils of hominids from 30-50,000 years ago, and dinosaur fossils from your 65 million years? Have bodies suddenly started deteriorating more quickly?
For climate data, check out climateaudit.org which IS run by a guy who has studied these issues extensively. Read his story about the Mann hockey stick, and how when Mann finally released his program, Steve ran different data sets through it, and got a hockey stick every time. Oh, and go and check - many people who signed the IPCC report are NOT climatologists, and the main author of the report admitted using scare tactics and suppressing dissenting opinions in the final draft. This link describes the lack of due diligence and review of the data, which is why I said it doesn't sound like science to me (that gets back to your testability and verification thing) http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=66 As the author points out, billions of dollars of economic decisions are being made and no one is checking the damn data.
And of course, 1,000 years ago, long before CO2 was being dispensed in significant quantities, Greenland was actually green, according to Viking accounts. So if it happened before, why is it necessarily due to man's activity this time? And the reason I'm exercised about this is China has become the largest CO2 emitter in the world, but they get a complete pass on Kyoto, while I'm told I'm going to have pay more for oil and gas in Canada, where it gets pretty cold in the winter. I'll be damned if I'm going to do that while China pumps out ten times more CO2 than Canada does.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104091616.htm - 2008 is set to be the coolest year since 2000. It's still higher by a fraction of degree than the long term average, I'll admit, but there has definitely been a cooling trend the last few years.
Couldn't find the story I read on Antarctica, so I'll concede that point. I did read that a couple of floating ice sheets are in danger of breaking off. That's where icebergs come from, right? Google "Larson ice sheet" for any number of links - the scientists are predicting a rise in the ocean levels of anywhere from 6 to 20 feet if it breaks off. Let's see how that works out, 'kay? I'm willing to bet money we don't see anything like that.
And hey, I said I'd like my kids to be exposed to other creation myths and religious literature. I haven't read the Analects, but I have read the Tao, and find that it contains much wisdom as well. I wish I had more time and money to get English translations of other myths, but there are only so many hours in the day, and I waste a lot of time here.
Funny that GWB has a Yale undergrad degree and a Harvard MBA, but most people here call him stupid. Obama has a Harvard law degree, and suddenly he's a genius. Typical lefty hypocrisy.
On the other hand, you elected Bill Clinton, a governor of a state that had the lowest education scores in the nation and is not much bigger in population than Alaska. All he seemed to do in his time as governor was give nice speeches and have sex with women who were not his wife. I agreed with Ross Perot - EDS annual sales were bigger than Arkansas's GDP, and while Perot was a cantankerous old coot, I have no doubt he would have been a more effective chief executive than Clinton, who benefited from the peace dividend (which Reagan/Bush brought about), the technology boom (which he had nothing to do with, although Al Gore invented the Internet), NAFTA (which Reagan/Bush negotiated, and Clinton just signed) and the relentless cutting of interest rates by Alan Greenspan (which Clinton nominally had no control over). I guess this is why Clinton felt he had nothing better to do than have oral sex with young women.
Right. And if you read anything about the internal dissension on her campaign, she appears to have managed it quite badly. I can't recall where I read the article - I think it was this month's Atlantic Monthly (and it's available on-line at http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200809/hillary-clinton-campaign) and the internal backbiting and bickering were documented in a number of emails. These were her own teammates, and they were telling tales on each other, leaking unflattering stuff about dissension to the media, and pulling the campaign into various different directions. She changed her manager mid-campaign, and sort of pulled her media adviser then got him back, which infuriated the other staff. As the article states, Clinton campaigned on competency and experience, and then proved she couldn't put together a cohesive team, or stick to a single strategy. One wonders what a shambles she would have made of her cabinet.
I just wonder where this reputation of competency comes from. She made a hash of her medical insurance plan, she claimed not to know her husband was cheating on her, etc. Her campaign was constantly in financial trouble. What exactly has she done?