-TSS-

Has Harper made any hints that he would be stepping down any time soon? As you in Canada can elect your leaders as many times as you wish and Harper is just 52 he may be around for a long time to come. Not necesarily as PM as the electorate yearns for a change from time to time but at least as a leader of the party.

If you say something like "On a clear day you can see for miles" or "The puck went just inches away from the net" it just sounds better that way in English than to use the metric versions, that will probably never change. However, nothing to do with actual metrication of society.

Is there any country in the world which has a federal system of government but would have a unicameral legislature? I don't think so.

Romney avoided humiliation in his home-state but his win was far from impressive. 41-37% is not a wide margin. The people of Michigan have not forgotten how Romney supported the bailouts of banks while opposed the bailouts of car-manufacturers.

I understand that furlong is used in some horse-races but otherwise it is redundant. I have never got it why the yard is always a horizontal measure, never a vertical one. You say that a distance between place A and place B is so and so many yards but you say that an aeroplane is at an altitude of so and so many feet and a lake is so and so many feet deep, never yards. I'm sure there is some logical explanation to that.

No, not really, I know that Canada didn't switch to the metric system yesterday or last year but some time ago. I know that Australia and New Zealand went metric in 1971, probably Canada changed around the same time. The thing which makes me wonder is that as children are probably no longer taught the obsolete units at school the system still persists in people's way of thinking and every day speech. Obviously if you have been an adult already when the system was brought in it is very unlikely that you learn out of it but people born after 1971 are already the majority of the population.

Australian PM Julian Gillard won a leadership-vote where she was challenged by the former PM Kevin Rudd. She got over 2/3 of the votes in the leadership-election.

I was wondering what 0F even means as it must mean something as it is the base for the whole scale. I found out that the guy who invented the scale made the coldest temperature in his home city in Poland as the zero point of the scale. A bit artificial if I may say so.

I don't think I'm mistaken in saying that even if there ever was a day that all of Canadians think in metric as long as their certain neighbour sticks to its old ways the majority of Canadians will still understand the other system as well. Nothing bad there, it harms no-one to understand two systems instead of one even if you think in only one system.

I guess if you live somewhere in southern US it is just a matter of what your used to whether you use F or C but the further north you go and especially in Canada F becomes very impractical because it can really get freezing. The temperatures between 0 F and 32 F really don't give you any idea of the temperature. It must really sound stupid to say that it is freezing outside, it must be 15 F.

In England when the metrication was enforced some shopkeepers refused to follow the orders and became so called metric martyrs who were subsequently fined. There is a powerful anti-metric lobby in England which paid the fines for those stubborn people.

Tell that to the Americans. Besides, they don't call their measuments as imperial but something else.

But does anyone any more think in gallons? I believe that the petrol-pumps in Canada must be measuring and charging for litres rather than gallons?

Indeed, when I have been to Britain I have never met a person who would talk about his/her weight in cm's. It's always feet and inches.

So it is it right to say that despite all the orders from above to not to use certain measurements and convert to newer ones, as long as people disagree it will never happen?

Speaks volumes really, I must say. How about temperatures? As I mentoined earlier in a country like Canada Celsius makes much more sense than Fahrenheit because it really gets freezing.

But if someone asks you how tall you are or how much you weigh which system is the one you think in?

How do you know I was not referring to Greenland? Ok, joking aside, Canada has a vast proportion of both its imports and exports from the neighbour and the neighbour always uses the old measurements, therefore what are the chances the metric system would ever catch on in Canada if the neighbour doesn't even consider adopting the same system?

As I understand Canada has gone metric some time ago in its system of weights and measurements. I wonder how the changeover has been carried out as one of Canada's neighbours is not really keen on the metric system at all. I understand that Quebec has always been metric, obvious reasons really, but how has the rest of Canada coped? Surely, if someone asks you how tall you are you don't say 180 cms or so but feet and inches. Surely, if someone asks how much you weigh, you don't think in kg's, or do you, but in pounds. What about temperatures? Canada of all countries is a perfect example how the fahrenheit-degree is just rubbish. For the very practical reasons when it is cold it is cleverer to say the temperature is minus something than some 10-15 degrees according to the F-scale.

I would imagine that most employers, at least if they are men, would be more than willing to hire young and attractive women but at the same time would be worried about losing them straight away as the women are likely to get pregnant before their 30's. Therefore, any plan to promote contraceptives or other kind of birth control should be well received by the employers. Btw, I know the law may differ from state to state in the US and from province to province in Canada but as a general rule, are the employers obliged by law to take back women employees who have been away for a long time because of pregnancy and maternity-leave?

The UK and Canadian system discourages people from voting for fringe-parties unless those parties have some strong regional base. However, this has changed lately in both countries and the electoral results have become more or less of a lottery because of the nature of the electoral system. Therefore no wonder that in both countries there is a strong demand for an electoral reform.

Regarding the Senegalese presidential election, wasn't there some uproar about the incumbent circumventing the constitution and seeking a third term even though the constitution allows only two terms?

The Estonians had a very interesting interpretation of independence when the Soviet-rule was overthrown. Namely, the Estonians still regard February 24th as their independence day because that was the date they declared independence in 1918. Therefore, they are just about to spend their 94th independence day. The period between 1940-1991 is in their eyes as a period of lawlessness and in their interpretation when Estonia regained its independence in 1991 a legal status was only restored. No need to declare independence because the lack of independence in the intervenening 51 years was illegal in the first place. Therefore, when independence was restored the Estonians decided that the citizens of their country were those people who were citizens in 1940 and their descendants. All of those people who entered the country after 1940 and their descendants were considered as foreign. A very rough decision as many of those people considered foreign by that decision were in fact born in Estonia.

There was a referendum yesterday in Latvia whether to adopt Russian as the second official language. About 1/3 of the population of Latvia are Russian-speaking, mainly because of the history of the country as an ex-Soviet state and how a lot of Russians were planted in the country. There are second and third generation Russian-speakers in the country who are not citizens of Latvia because they have not passed the language test. The result of the referendum gave a resounding 75-25 victory for maintaining Latvian as the only official language. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17083397

You have just put into words what I have often been thinking. Namely, when there is a break from main-stream religions it is all too often because those people who break away think that God must be a petty-minded policeman and that religion they broke away from did not match that view.