cannuck

I behave like someone who designs and builds mechanical devices for a half century. As it turns out: I have had to obey the laws of physics every time, in spite of wanting to be above such plebian considerations. It is not stones that are in your way, it is knowledge and understanding. BTW: my "brainwashed kids" are both accomplished scientists, one of who teaches biochem at University and the other who is a senior scientist with a large international company.

found this thread and had a quick look, though maybe time for a little counterpoint to bjre. Not that you and Tim have not been carrying the ball very well, I just have a bit different point of view. First of all, I had an office in Guangzhou from the early '90s and later in Shenzhen until my very good friend and business partner died in 2007. He was borne in China to a Canadian father and Chinese mother, but due to the Exclusion Act, was not able to be brought home. Mom kept them alive throughout the Japanese invasion and occupation, then walked her pre-teen son over 1,000 kms. through the battles between the Nationalist and Red Army. My friend was, let's just say known to a significant number of people in Canton and when the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, Hong Kong who would go on to be important to the development of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan in the future. They were some of the first people to immigrate (Exclusion Act ended IIRC in '47, but first actual immigrants arrived in '52). After becoming a very successful businessman in Canada, my then young friend did business for Communist China (something for a Nationalist!!) all through the '70s and '80s. He not only traded internationally for food, but travelled extensively throughout China dealing with provincial leaders regarding food distribution. Unlike Chinese citizens in Mao's time, and even deep into Deng's time, he knew far, far better what was actually going on in the country. After his passing, I stayed in touch with my closest Chinese friend, who rose to the very top of one of those massive state owned enterprises (vice chair, responsible for all international business). He has continued my education on how exactly things are actually done in China. BTW: he immigrated last year, as even from an extremely privileged position, he had no further desire to raise his son in China. So, to summarize: I know China first hand from my many years working in and out of there, and second hand from people far, far more knowledgeable than 99.99% of Chinese when it comes to economic policies and the strategies employed to carry this out. From all of that, I can say that China is one thing above all else in international business - PREDATORY. It has an extremely active and highly organized (and effective) policy of stealing technology, of coming into marketplaces and destroying local competitors, abusing their host country to exploit resources, and walking out the door leaving nothing behind. As has been mentioned in this thread, big business only gets into China by having a state owned entity as an equal partner. GM only managed to outgrow the market leader (VW, first big company to come in) because they were so weak that the Chinese partner managed to seize de facto control and have their way with the bankrupt yanks. When I see someone as totally inept as Trudeau trying to make some kind of deal believing we will come out somewhere near even in trade with China, it makes my cry to think there are people this stupid in Ottawa. The title of the thread is a lot more prophetic than I would wish.

Being "closed to the atmosphere" is not the issue. You need to be closed to gravity. It is not air pressure that causes the liquid to be at same level, it is the hydraulic pressure that will equalize between the sides by coming to the same level. That is a function of gravity. I have explained to you what is wrong, but you have failed the ultimate test of ANY kind of science: you believe your own BS. I assume you are studying political science, not any kind of actual science.

no time to read the article. nasty capitalist pig stuff to do. Just working with the table you provided. Do you think anyone up here really gives a damn who went into space, when, where and why? Let you in on another secret: nobody in our company nor anyone we deal with in our NYC operations or in our WY operations really cares either. We are a bit too busy trying to survive in a very broken economy.

lets see: 17.4 / 325 = 0.0535% per million people in the US, and 9.7 / 127 = 0.0763% per million in Japan. Another failure of the US public school system comes to light. Then there's that reading comprehension problem: Did I say anyone else had left LOE? BTW: have any Americans done so in the last 45 years? Didn't think so.

It is no secret that the only reason for the "space race" was purely military. We in the Western World counted on the USA to uphold the efforts, but since nobody produces much of anything there anymore, and the government is $20 TRILLION in debt, we can't expect a lot from them. ALL of the private space initiatives are coming from people who have acquired their wealth strictly through speculative gain. I hope that long before anyone is foolish enough to send someone to Mars or even the Moon, the speculative bubble will once again do a 1929 full collapse and for another century, we might once again have a real global economy based on wealth that has been created. So, my forecast for the next several decades is that the Chinese will put a lot more hardware into space so they can watch and hack more effectively, but all of the planets and terrestial satellites should be safe from us that long, at least. BTW: the idea that we need access to resource on other planets because we are running out is ludicrous. ALL of the resources that are here, less those launched into deep space, are all still here and going nowhere. It is not a lack of anything that is our problem, it is an excess - of people.

let me guess: science was not your best subject in school? You have not accounted for what it takes to hold the water in the right side at a level above the left side - you show it communicating at the bottom - that would be neccessary for the bottom run of the conveyor belt to pass from the low side to the high side. If you or anyone could devise an energy-efficient way to pass the convery belt and is "air cube" cargo from the left side to the right side, you would be a mechanical genius. BUT: as to perpetual motion, you need to understand that the sum of all of the forces in your system are zero, there is no excess energy to harvest. In the missing piece of your puzzle (passing through the barrier from left to right) the pressure differential between the two sides that must overcome taking the cargo from left to right side would be exactly the amount of the buoyancy of the same cargo - the source of the force you think will drive the system. Not only do you end up with zero net, but there loss of energy in the system would be the friction and force needed to move the sealing mechanism to seal the belt and cargo on its pass from left to right. In other words, to get any motion at all, you would need to add that amount of energy to the system to make it move (overcoming sealing mechanism losses, hyrdodynamic losses from moving through the water and mechanical losses from the flexing of the belt and the bearings of the two pulleys). I applaud your generosity in offering your solution to perpetual motion freely to the rest of the world, but sadly, you have not stumbled upon something that is not understood, you just didn't understand it.

I voted to remain "public" but the problems that DO exist are not just because of public funding, but legislation that tries to deny me the freedom to "go around" and take personal responsibility. The whinning about "two tier" and all of that crap is political dogma that seriously impinges upon my personal freedom to do what I may need to do to protect my own or my family's health. The anser is to look at how much better other countries work as they allow full access to an unlimited range of private services without in any way trying to establish a public monopoly - as we do in Canada. As I mentioned in one post to B-C, we are starting to get that in SK and AB (and I think Quebec due to a charter challenge), but we still have a long way to go. BTW: not getting timely access to treatment in an ER is a VERY long way from the problems of not getting snow cleared int me

B-C: Your are right, and I think I addressed the Canadian deficiencies in an earlier post. I go down that rathole because I have larger business presence in the US than Canada, and sick care is a big deal for us.

Tommy the Commie? You mean Kiefer Sutherland's grandpa. I knew he was famous for something.

Not every Canadian hospital has big ER backups. Very much like some US cities, my own observation and from other reports, the vast majority of ER visits seem to be from newly arrived Canadians. Our out-of-control immigration contributes to ER overloads in big cities, as does urbanization. Did not notice the link (on here while negotiating a deal with someone overseas, so mind wandering). Sorry about that. Yes, you are very right, things vary from province to province, as they do in the US from state to state. Sick care is a provincial responsibility with some federal oversight.

An exceptionally extreme rarity, thus a red herring. Fact is: even our admittadly broken system gets far btter results than the US system at half of the costs. BTW: if I need an immediate MRI, I just jump in my plane and an hour later I am in Edmonton or Calgary and can be home a couple of hours later with the deed done for a reasonable cost. Yes, this varies province by province. I can get the same thing here in SK, the birthplace of socialized medicine in Canada, but the clinic must provide a free MRI to the province for each (1 or 2, can't remember) private cash one given. If Canadians want experimental drugs that are not yet approved here, they can go to the US, Mexico, Cuba, India - wherever they wish to experiment with unapproved drugs.

People in Canada never have to worry about being eligible for full medical coverage. People in Canada never have to stay stuck in a job because they are afraid to lose their medical insurance. People in Canada don't have to refrain from starting a small business because they can't afford decent medical coverage during a startup (that happens to be a lot more important than most realize). People in Canada rarely go bankrupt due to medical bills.

You are very correct in that there is a substantial public sector sick care component to US medicine, but it is the 60% who are on their own to deal with the private insurers (or lack of any insurance) who can be in deep doo doo. One of our key employees has a wife (who is a RN) that has an existing condition that will absolutely preclude her beging able to get coverage from business insurers. Over the last few years, she has been diagnosed (incorrectly) with literally dozens of conditions, and often treated for them - we believe at considerable cost to her health and life. We keep an otherwise unsustainable business going simply because he can not affford to lose our to tier medical benefit parkage. Even with that, actual sick care is hardly what you would call top drawer unless you are in one of the few exceptionally good (i.e. world class) facilities that ARE scatterd around the US. It is easy to go from the Uniparty talking notes about sick care in the US, but you will have a very different opinion when you have to deal with it where people's lifelihood and lives are at stake.

It's the Trudeau way: conspire with and reward the enemy, ignore or destroy those who are there to defend us. Started with the old man (and Paul Hellyer) and continues with the offspring.

The #1 issue is realizing that sick care is a social service , NOT A BUSINESS, at least not in the conventional sense. Other than the US, every other G7 nation has figured out how to integrate public insurance with a blend of public and private service delivery. While government is singlularly bad at doing almost anything, IMHO it SHOULD be providing 100% funding for a full range of sick care and health care programmes, but not in any way interfering with a private citizen's right to choose to do whatever they wish in using public or personally funded service delivery. Confining its monopoly to funding removes them from the role of conflict of interest in administering public funds and public interest in the quality and quantity of service delivered. Now, since the infrastructure is there, no reason for the public sector to discontinue providing the services it does now, just needs to become accountable for the lack of productivity and organization. Best done by allowing the private sector to step up to offer the same services at the same rates and service levels dictated by the insurer (gov't) as well as whatever they wish above and beyond. Where the "not business" side should come in is providing actual health care. Part of that is weaning us off of the notion that medicine is all about drugs, and that drugs are the ultimate solution to just about anything. That, and getting the damned lawyers and insurance companies to hell out of medicine. THAT is a significant part of US costs, and we have become so liberal and mindless that we are building our economy in the image of the yanks.

Uh....it was those "wise" Candians who elected a drama teacher who's skill set and intellectual prowess would get him a job as a greeter at WalMart at the very best. Regarding the Morneaus: one thing you learn to do when conducting investigations is to rule out co-incidence when gathering evidence. 99% of the time, it will save you a lot of time and grief.

From what I can see, the Trudeau administration sees each and every one of these situations as an opportunity to buy the Liberal Party of Canada votes in the next federal election (and maybe some provincials) at the expense of our grandchildren who must service this staggering debt. They have no concern whatsoever what they are doing to our country and our society.

Why, thank you. Coming from yourself, I consider that to be quite a compliment.

my basic right to good government and reasonable administration has been violated. Can I sue the drama teacher for that? I am not going to kill a Yank to get the whole $10MM, since I can settle out of court for a million or so for the harm done to me.

If you read my posts, you would have noticed I clearly make the exception for IPOs, POs and private placements. What you need to consider is that actual investment is far less than -.1% of anything that Wall Street and Bay Street does. They spend 99.9% of their time churning the stock that was long, long ago issued. When you see things such as Microshi....er soft with a market cap of 1,000x book value, and similar silliness for almost any equity chosen to be a subject of running up (or sometimes down), you realize that the business of recovering the value of the IPO is nothing but an excuse for chips to be put on the table at the casino. From that frame of reference: take the leap into hyperspace and just think about what the entire world of derivatives and other synthetic instruments represents. Derivatives represent a block of "investments" that are nothing but a bet on a bet - backed by sweet diddly shit - that have an exposure of 10x to 100x (no way to exactly calculate) WORLD GDP. And you don't think this is out of control???? Having been an officer of a couple of publicly traded companies, and I am ashamed to say, in one case, the guy who ran the stock value up and down at the financiers' requests (not as an officer, but as an independent advisor), I have a pretty good idea of how that market works. I also have business partners who were once Wall Street (and one Bay Street) whiz kids - who have come to realize exactly what I am trying to tell you here.

I have yet to encounter ANYONE in the top 0.1% income bracket that pays PROPORTIONATELY what the peons in the top 1%. Yes, the very top earners pay a lot of DOLLARS, but the business of tax avoidance takes a lot more time and money than those who earn less than some magic cutoff line - let's just assume a mil a year - can be bothered with. Similarly, those who WORK for their money by producing something or delivering a useful service, regardless of how much they earn, are generally too busy to play games. Those who produced diddly SHIT are at their leisure (or more likely in the business) of doing nothing but running the greed machine to deprive their fellow taxpayer of earnings from the casino and payments into the tax base.

and that is relavant how???? If you are trying to do some kind of phallic measureup: one of my US office addresses is in the 300 block of Madison Avenue. You don't pay that lease on pauper's wages.

Michael: If I may be allowed to be so presumptive - I believe Spanky was taking responsibility to invoking the Eyeball response.

I could care less about the "morality", I am far more concerned with sustainability. I speak for Main Street - people who actually produce things or provide services that are supportive of production. It is the ONLY way that any wealth is created. You speak for Wall Street, which, except for the stated exceptions, is only there to redistribute wealth, and in doing so put massive inflationary pressure on currency. I have stated exactly how. The real issue is that the people only stay ingorant for so long, and eventually they wise up and the bubble bursts. BUT: in the meantime, when you could pay a 5% dividend from real business, you could increase you derivative portfolio by thousands of times - so where do you think the money is going to go? Sure as hell not invested in Main Street - thus the current demise of much of North American small and medium size business.