Chuck U. Farlie

I'm pretty lazy, but I still manage to vote whenever asked to despite it being a pointless procedure. No matter who you vote for it will just be some useless corrupt monkey that will get in anyway - irregardless of political stripe. No wonder the turn out is so low. A choice between most of these monkeys is no choice at all...

Yeah, I wonder why they made choices that that? Could it be because they see they can make money running guns and drugs? No wonder a high percentage of prisoners in this country are natives - because a high percentage of the criminals in this country belong to the same group! The percentage would even be higher if natives were treated equally to everyone else in Canada, but they aren't... they are given racist special treatment which has to end.

Give me a break. Security measures could be set in place. As I already said, many people trust managing all their finances on the internet and that is secure. To me, my personal finances are much more important than my single vote.

I think it could be made to be secure - or fairly secure anyway, and I would love it if I could vote by internet. They could link it up with the ePass service provided by Service Canada. ePass is registered using your social insurance number, and when you register they send you your password via registered snail mail - only you can receive the mail and they will only send to the address that Service Canada / Revenue Canada has on file. Once you vote, the system could be set up to report back to you what your decision was and if the decision reported is different than your choice they could set up a dispute resolution service. The only problem I could see with it is forced voting - i.e. someone standing behind you forcing you to vote a certain way - although they could dispute that later using the dispute resolution centre, and I think those scenarios would be minimal. At the end of the day, I trust trading stocks and options, do all my banking, apply for and pay for insurance, monitor my information with revenue canada all online and all securely - so why would it not be secure for me to place a vote?

There is a monopoly on frequency. What I mean is that there is only one operator using GSM (rogers, aka fido, aka petro mobility, aka 7/11 mobility). There is only one operator using TDMA, and only one using CDMA (I don't know which one is Bell and which one is Telus, but you get the idea). Every time you want to switch between them, you need a different phone. The government, aka crtc or whoever, should blow the spectrum wide open and allow multiple competitors per frequency range. Multiple competitors will bring lower prices. For anyone on this board who has even use a cell phone abroad, they will know that we get raped here in Canada for something that is taken for granted in the rest of the world. Other countries far poorer than our own offer far more choices and make money at it, the only reason it isn't happening in Canada is too much regulation.

As the others have said, god's existence (or not) has nothing to do with evolution. Just how does evolution prove god is smart? Evolution doesn't say or imply anything about god what-so-ever. There is no onus to disprove the existence of god - if we had to go proving the non-existence of everything that doesn't exist, we would be here a while! ;-) How does the quote go? "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."? So... what makes you believe evolution is controlled by the hand of god? Where is your extraordinary proof?

This coming from a guy who averages 25 postings a day.

There are other options, but not that many, and all based on the same infrastructure (just like internet providers). I don't use the cellphone much... so I use petro mobility. You can use any unlocked GSM phone or buy a phone from them... it is all pay as you go though, so not suitable for high use users. It uses the rogers network though... so at the end of the day rogers controls how much you will pay. As Bonam said, the key is not more legislation but less... allow more companies to set up cellphone and internet infrastructure and they will come - there is money to be made. In Indonesia you did not buy a phone from a network provider. You bought your phone at a shop and then bought a SIM card from which ever provider you wanted. The rates were a fraction of the price we pay here, and there were at least 6 or 7 different carriers you could choose from.

I think with a lack of unions we would have a lot more rich business owners, and a hell of a lot more poor who can barely pay their bills. As WIP suggested, unions help to raise the wages of non-union workers. If no unions existed it would be a race to the bottom for corporations to pay their employees as little as possible. Bringing in boatloads of immigrants that are willing to do hard work for pennies doesn't help fight against that race for the bottom either. I've heard stories about when Ford first unionized and wages started to improve. Finally the average worker could afford a house - and better yet, could afford the goods that companies were selling. It was good for the economy as a whole: More people with disposable income = more money spent = more goods being made and sold = more jobs = stronger economy. Having a race for the bottom and lowering people's income does the opposite - it will destroy the economy even worse. Companies do not pay what people deserve, companies pay as little as they can get away with to retain an employee. Here is a personal story... Up until 2 years ago I was a truck driver working in the private sector (despite having a MSc from U of Waterloo, truck driving was all I could get). At the time I was making $15/hour and expected to work 60 to 70 hours a week while never being home - and when I was home all I could do was sleep. Not a very good life at all - in fact, I was ready to leave this shit-hole of a country for good. If my education and skills weren't desired here, I would go overseas to where they are (like Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Dubai, etc etc). Finally I managed to get into Canada Post as a truck driver. Now I make about $23/hour - which in the GTA is just barely enough to pay my mortgage on a condo, taxes, insurance, and gas - so now I am making nearly the same take home income, but much less time spent doing so. I am much happier to making a much more reasonable wage, which coincidentally is not out of line with other private unionized companies like UPS or FedEx, but primarily I am much happier because I am not being worked to the bone and I am never expected to operate in dangerous conditions. In private non-unionized trucking firms I was expected to go over my logbook hours and lie, I was expected to ignore unsafe equipment, and if I didn't listen and complained there were piles of other drivers willing to put themselves and everyone on the road at risk.

Nevermind, I just found the info.... time to go buy a couple 60-ouncers.

Question... If the LCBO goes on strike, will that be Wednesday morning or Thursday morning? Will the Beer store be affected, or only the LCBO? I need to know when and what product to stock up on.

Bonam, nevermind Oleg and his incoherent ramblings... just put him on ignore... Anyway, I said belief while maybe I should have said accept. To the average person who doesn't study, evolution or creation comes down to a belief system. To a scientist it is not about belief and more about evidence, but not everyone has been in the position to study biology. Oleg... I read your post only because it was quoted. Evolving, or even natural selection has nothing to do with adapting to a situation. A mutation is not a change in reaction. Here is a very simple graphical representation for you: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/index.php?page=2

Oh yeah, I am so happy with flip-flop mcguinty... loss of fundamental rights, increase in taxes... The Liberal government of Ontario is a joke and has to go.

How about beavers? They manipulate their environment to better suit them.

Do you support the Tamil Tigers who killed their own people and used them as shields? Too bad we can't refuse Rae's re-entry to Canada. By the way, having a one-way ticket and trying to enter almost any country in the world is grounds for refusal. I've been forced to buy an onward ticket upon arrival in Malaysia before because I came with a one-way - I'm lucky they didn't send me back immediately. The Tamil Tigers have been deemed a terrorists organization - the Sri Lanken government has every right to refuse entry of a terrorist supporter.

There, I fixed that sentence for you.

The NDP? Are you kidding me? No thanks, I still remember the Rae years.

After reading America Alone I started to think about why Canada (and other first world Western countries) have such low birth rates, and in particular why I don't plan to have any kids. After reading through the Tax-Freedom-Day thread and clicking through smallc's link regarding tax rates versus GDP I think (although I haven't found any research to back it up) that there is a strong correlation between high tax rates and a low birth rate. I think if you take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...rcentage_of_GDP and then look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_birth_rate it is easy to see that the countries with the highest birth rates have the lowest taxes. Now... if I consider my own situation. I make a decent income for a guy in my mid-thirties - slightly above the national median income at about $50k/yr. My Dad made less in 1960 dollars when he started our family, but he also paid considerably less tax. Despite a reasonable income, I still don't think I can afford to have any kids. After I pay income tax, pst, gst, property tax, plus my mortgage, utilities, gasoline, insurance, food, and a very small amount for entertainment (no cable, no satellite, no homephone - only luxury is an internet connection), there just isn't anything left. I don't know how I could possibly afford daycare, clothes, formula, and everything else that kids need. I am lucky if I get a 2.5% raise every year, so my income level isn't likely to change much in the next few years. If there isn't enough money to give a kid a good life, then I won't have a kid - and I think many couples have similar thoughts. If an average income earner can't afford to have children you are bound to have a very low birth rate - so in essence government taxes are driving our own cultural extinction.

It was a very loose comparison that I made in the first place, hence: "If they are anything like their Ontario Liberal cousins we would be much worse off." The federal Liberals are pushing for money to flow faster, and they aren't known as 'tax and spend liberals' for nothing. I am quite certain we would be worse off if the liberals were in charge - maybe not worse off in loss of jobs, but worse off deficit wise very likely. I'm just getting tired of liberals and ndp'ers jumping on the conservative's back over the size of the deficit, calling for Flaherty's resignation and such, meanwhile the deficit would be greater if either of them were in charge. This bullshit partisan shit is getting redundant and hypocritical - from all sides. I'm becoming more and more aware that none of these politicians are worth a fraction of what they are paid, in fact, they should all be shot and pissed on. And the cheerleaders on this site don't help either.

I didn't mind paying tax much either when I was in my 20s - especially when I had tuition fees that were tax deductible. However, when I reached 30 and got a mortgage, property tax, high income tax, high insurance costs, etc etc it all gets to be a big financial burden. I would also like to retire some day, but it is hard to save anything at all when taxes eat up more than 50% of your income. Come back and tell us how much you like paying taxes when you grow up and are not backed by your family and their business.

If I didn't deserve to keep my money, I would see absolutely no reason to go out and make money.

I see the statement of 'gay is not normal' is just a truism. A certain percentage of any species' population is homosexual. The percentage of homosexuals to heterosexuals in any population is usually quite low, so it is absolutely correct to say that the minority of the group are 'abnormal' - depending on what you take normal to be: nor·mal [ náwrm'l ] adjective Definition: 1. usual: conforming to the usual standard, type, or custom <<<< in this case, homosexuals are abnormal. Most of the population is heterosexual. 2. healthy: physically, mentally, and emotionally healthy <<<< neither abnormal or normal. A homosexual pretending to be hetero, or a hetero pretending to be homo could be considered mentally or emotionally abnormal. 3. occurring naturally: maintained or occurring in a natural state <<<< in this case, completely normal. Homosexuality occurs naturally in many species - including homo sapiens. At the end of the day, who cares? Gays exist, live with it.

For sure, sharkman would rather believe that scientists think 'aliens did it'. He would like to think that the scientists are just as wacky if not more so than religious people, therefore justifying his irrational faith.

Yet another Liberal scandal, go figure.

Unlike some of these, in Indonesia you can drink whenever you want anywhere you want. In fact there are even fewer drinking laws than in the nanny state that is Canada/Ontario. You can also eat pork if you want, and you are not segregated from the population - you can live and mingle anywhere and you can talk to every woman you see - unlike some of those countries you mentioned. My only complaint with the level of islam in Indonesia is the number of neighbourhood mosques that blare the morning prayer... hard to find a place where you can sleep properly at 5am.