GWiz

You're nuts... Manitoba does NOT buy power from the U.S.... Where'd you get that idea from? Manitoba SELLS electricity, as a major Hydro Electric Exporter (Quebec being the other major Hydro Electric Exporter) to the U.S. and other provinces at a negotiated export rate slightly higher than what Manitoba Hydro charges us (Manitobans)... Electricity Exports

Hmmm, all good points but not quite right about the Geothermal... I live in Winnipeg... It get's pretty cold in winter and pretty hot in summer... 3 years ago I converted to Geothermal heating and cooling and I couldn't be happier... By provincial law all Geothermal units have to have, as mentioned, an auxilliary "back up" electric coil unit with it, mine has, the smallest available at 5000 btu (10,000 is the "standard"), it's not even "hooked up" on mine... Just the facts: The house - Raised Bungalow with 5BR & 3 Baths and 2200 sq. ft. of living space on two levels... Built in 1965... Initial Capital Cost - approx. $20,000.00 including new electic water heater after Fed. and Prov. grants/rebates avail. at the time - $15,500.00 Heating/Cooling & Electricity costs prior - approx. $220.00 averaged P.M. Current averaged Heating/Cooling & Electricity - approx. $85.00 P.M. Savings - avg. $135.00 P.M Temp. in house winter and summer 21.5C - 72F Added benefit in summer on Electric water heater by Geo. aided Water Heating... Problems- none (from -43C to +40C) in 3 years... Other things I've done to my home re: energy efficiency - ThermoGard (brand name) pliable stucco coating which seals the house (it works, my home is in the top 5% of homes in Manitoba in energy efficiency based on heat lose - leakage) at about the same cost as painting the stucco (3 sides) & foundation above ground... cost - $2800.00 (it looks real nice too and is lifetime guaranteed) R50 Attic insulation - blown in fibreglass - cost after overlapping Fed. & Prov. rebates minus $87.00 (more rebate than cost)... Converted whole house to CFL Lighting - cost near zero with Manitoba Hydro free exchanges & the fact that my basement and kitchen already had flourescent lights (tubes)... One point I'd like to make is that approx. 95% of commercial buildings (office, warehouse, manufacturing, etc.) in Canada are lit with flourescent (CFL) lighting, so it's hardly something new other than the configuration of the lights (tubes vs "bulbs")... The way I fugure it is if it's good enough for business it should be good enough for me... Oh, almost forgot, one "expense" you didn't mention is Computers (+ modems etc.) and TVs which in most homes today cost quite a bit in electricity, I know they do in mine... One other point in calculating "pay back" I compared the difference in cost of getting a new high efficiency furnace and air conditioning (approx. $10,000) to getting Geothermal so on balance my "pay back" will be 4-7 years on the difference... Another thing, I created signicicant man hours of employment by all the things I've done since all labour and products, the Geothermal unit was manufactured in a plant in London Ont., shipping to Winnipeg, the stucco coating & attic insul. produced in Manitoba, over 150 man hours of local labour to install + production labour hours for the products... Since I use no "fossil fuels" in my home I have no worries about things like carbon monoxide or explosions... Since Manitoba's electricity is 100% Hydro Electric I have a very small "carbon footprint" as it pertains to my home... An added benefit, since my decisions were based solely on cost benefit not "green" benefit...

Well put... This is certainly one of the better posts I've seen and corresponds quite nicely with my view about the matters at hand in Egypt as I've posted throughout this thread... Good post... As the Egyptian Military goes so does Egypt...

He's a lost cause who's lost his reasoning... Nothing there to discuss things with...

What the hell has Meech Lake got to do with the price of rice in China? Sheeesh...

What's more likely, the planets of this thread or Global Warming?

Naaa, you start, I'm too busy... BUT, be sure to let me know what the new neighbours are like when you meet them... It always amazes and amuses me when theories are presented as facts, but I guess that's just HUMAN nature... <edit> Ooops, you got me, it should have been - 1. :angry:

Sure... IF you're willing to do the following - Let's start with cutting the F-35 purchase (replace with 100 NEW F/A-18E/F NOW at 1/3 the cost), stopping all publicly funded advertising, and cancelling the corporate tax cuts... Then - Perhaps a small rise in the GST back to 7% and a 10% tax hike to everyone making over $500K NET a year, with a freeze on all taxes at current levels for everyone else, if you're serious about this and not just blowing smoke... Now that's something I could vote for, eh...

Examples please! Con rhetoric doesn't cut it... As I recall the last time anything close to this happened it ended up as quite the scandal for the Liberals, now I think it's the Con's turn to face an inquiry over this... What do you think?

qué se•rá, se•rá

Watch the stars - you are getting sleepy, watch the stars - you are getting sleepy --- escape, escape your earthly bounds and traval afar to some distant star...

Ahhh to dream of wonders yet unseen... Dream on my friend dream on...

From the minds of man, limited as that be...

As I said, You can lead a horse (or jackass) to water, but you can't make him drink... You can give someone all the facts and information, but you can't make them think... What's it feel like to be a thoughtless ignoramous?

True... Unfortunately human technology is at the 1/10 of 1% (maybe) stage of reaching light speed which is an awefully long way from 50% of light speed or even 10% which would make that travel time 80 years one way... Humanity would have to drop it's entire concepts of "time", "distance" and "space" to ever make what you are suggesting even remotely possible...

True... In my view the smartest thing to do is pretty much what the U.S. and Canada et al are doing... All I'm seeing here is a lot of FEAR mongering and useless speculation...

As unfortunately must I... However, it has been my experience that societies are not always as easily manipulated in todays socio-economic realities as they were even a decade ago... In Egypt especially I feel this is true primarily because of the much higher awareness of what the "western world" has to offer... It will of course all depend on whether or not a true leader, perhaps even one from within the military establishment or those that have not been heard from yet, those being the "pro-stability" crowd that would in all likelihood be mostly a-political and least radical, to step forward... Egypt, one must remember, is very unlike most of the nations in the middle east with a rather "diversified" and mostly "modern" culture... A middle eastern culture that would have little problem understanding a very "western" phrase such as "it's the economy stupid"... Which, if truth be told is what triggered the "revolt" and could therefore also lead to it's more favourable conclusion...

Too true.. As I wrote on another thread: You can lead a horse (or jackass) to water, but you can't make him drink... You can give someone all the facts and information, but you can't make him think...

"Only"? You are right, however, everything is relative... 1. Proxima Centauri The closest star to our our own solar system will not always be closest, but it will be a long time before that happens. Proxima Centauri is the third star in the Alpha Centauri star system, also known as Alpha Centauri C. •Distance: 4.2 LY •Spectral Type: M5.5Vc (My Note: The Sun's Spectral Type is G2 so Alpha Centauri C (a "Red Giant") is a highly unlikely candidate for Earth like planets.) A light year is a way of measuring distance. That doesn't make much sense because "light year" contains the word "year," which is normally a unit of time. You are used to measuring distances in either inches/feet/miles or centimeters/meters/kilometers, depending on where you live. You know how long a foot or a meter is -- you are comfortable with these units because you use them every day. Same thing with miles and kilometers -- these are nice, human increments of distance. Even so, light years measure distance. For example, the closest star to Earth (besides our sun) is something like 24,000,000,000,000 miles (38,000,000,000,000 kilometers) away. That's the closest star. There are stars that are billions of times farther away than that. When you start talking about those kinds of distances, a mile or kilometer just isn't a practical unit to use because the numbers get too big. No one wants to write or talk about numbers that have 20 digits in them! ­So to measure really long distances, people use a unit called a light year. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second). Therefore, a light second is 186,000 miles (300,000 kilometers). A light year is the distance that light can travel in a year, or: 186,000 miles/second * 60 seconds/minute * 60 minutes/hour * 24 hours/day * 365 days/year = 5,865,696,000,000 miles/year A light year is 5,865,696,000,000 miles (9,460,800,000,000 kilometers). That's a long way! Using a light year as a distance measurement has another advantage -- it helps you determine age. Let's say that a star is 1 million light years away. The light from that star has traveled at the speed of light to reach us. Therefore, it has taken the star's light 1 million years to get here, and the light we are seeing was created 1 million years ago. So the star we are seeing is really how the star looked a million years ago, not how it looks today. In the same way, our sun is 8 or so light minutes away. If the sun were to suddenly explode right now, we wouldn't know about it for eight minutes because that is how long it would take for the light of the explosion to get here. http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/question94.htm

Ummm, fyi, the GG is part of the Canadian Government, an integral part of the Government in fact, in that the GG (as the Queen's representative for Canada) is Canada's defacto Head of State and as such Commander of Canada's Military... That's Head of State as in Obama being the Head of State for the USA... So while you are right about Tax Dollars being use to provide for the GG's OFFICIAL functions, including travel, no more so or any different than, ANY member of Canada's Government, with all the same restrictions and oversight that apply... I fail to see the point you are trying to make...

While all this is very interesting I think it should be remembered that anything and everything that's "seen" is based on a rather simplistic basis... Simply put, a common 3 dimentional basis, without factoring in the dimensions of time and distance... What any "telescope" of any current kind sees from anywhere IN our solar system OUTSIDE OF our solar system is what was there millions or billions of lightyears ago and NOT what is there now (human time concept)... It's also why SETI has not and in all likleyhood will not "make contact" unless it's something "out there" trying to "make contact" with us...

You can lead a horse (or jackass) to water, but you can't make him drink... You can give someone all the facts and information, but you can't make him think...

Not quite right, the Liberals tried to improve on the U.S. - Canada FREE TRADE deal where Brian Moroney sold Canada out to the U.S. in NAFTA, but he didn't gain much, other than a little better access to U.S. and MEXICO markets, because to get the "fairness" Chretien wanted it would have cost Canada the Auto-Pact agreement which was too high a price to pay... When you're out of chips (after Free Trade) it's hard to raise the stakes... Thanks again liean Brian, you screwed Canada real good... :angry:

yep

Nice Pic., I remember that one...