Remiel

Fortunately they have not been so persistent in trying to get in since then.

Believe me, I would not do it again that way. But when you have already shot it once and it did not work properly the first time there is not a lot of room for backing down. If these are well known facts though that a pellet gun is not going to work well on a small animal then it should be illegal to market a weapon as sufficient for hunting rodents. That was not the case, however. In any case, I looked up the relevant laws at the time and it seemed as if it were in principle okay to deal with pests. In Ontario what is illegal is to relocate them somewhere far away from your house, so if they are damaging it there is not really any alternative to killing them.

It was one of a number of squirrels any of which could have been the ones chewing into our attic.

I do not really see the need to worry about the philosophical differences between what taxes are for between natives and non-natives. Those are not foundational to the relationship between us. And as long as I were getting some kind of value for money according to standards elsewhere it should be neither here nor there what the taxes are "for" .

Do the laws in Canada differ to those of the US with regards to what actions can be considered criminal intimidation while in possession of certain weapons? I was reading the regs once on things like swords and axes, and it seemed they said it was perfectly legal to carry around a sword in plain view but practically any communication with those around you could potentially be considered an act of intimidation. I would guess it is the same for firearms here, but I am not so sure about how that works in the US. Anyway I can no longer say I have never killed anything with a gun, though it was just a pellet gun. The poor critter probably would have wished it was a real gun because it was appallingly ineffective at killing it quickly, to the extent I worry I could have been guilty of something. I will not likely become an afficianado, nor will I stop being relatively anti-gun, but since I am super hypocritical I will say that I kind of wish I could get my hands on a Macmillan TAC-50. Just because it was the gun used by the Canadian sniper for his World record shot.

I am loathe to write about First Nations issues because my PC side (rightly) fears that it is the topic which could do the worst damage to a reputation and friendships if unpopular views were exposed later in life. But the last few years of stewing on it alone had, I think, perhaps contributing to me being even more reactionary on the subject that I might otherwise have been. I need to get some of it off my chest. My question then is this: To what extent is our specific Constitutional Monarchy, where sovereignty is nominally located in the institution of the Crown, compatible with the rhetoric espoused lately of the "nation to nation" relationship between Canada and our indigenous peoples? Indigenous tribes seem, for the most part, to believe they have a kind of popular sovereignty, where the source of the chiefs' power and authority is the people themselves. However, as the Teresa Spence affair seemed to indicate (by way of the dogged determination to see the Governor General on political matters), many also seem to have no problem believing that the Crown is the source of power and authority in Canada and that Canadians themselves are of inferior status, subordinate to this institution. In other words, I am worried that while the rhetoric is "nation to nation" the reality many believe in is "nation to Crown" or "nation to Sovereign" . Certainly there is the so-called "special relationship" between First Nations and the Crown. This is also problematic I think. How can it be in a democracy that the relationship between citizens and their Head of State is not not of greater importance than that between the Head of State and a third party that holds a separate kind of sovereignty? The greatest manifestation of this problem lies, I think, in the seeming case that if Canadians wanted to change the Head of State we would have to consult with First Nations, not merely as Canadians, all of which would of course have an equal say, but as a separate polity that would somehow get a say, even possibly a veto, on the central pillar of the Canadian Constitution. Obviously I am aware that this would mirror to some extent how Canada interfered baselessly with the governing structure of First Nations, but two wrongs do not make a right, and a tyranny of the majority cannot be improved upon by becoming a tyranny of the minority (as Syria's relationship with its Alawites should prove). I am sure that there are factual errors that I will or would be lambasted for, but I am inclined to think that they would not necessarily detract from my actual thesis: That a healthy nation to nation relationship between Canada and indigenous peoples may require the form Canada's sovereignty takes to conform more closely to the popular model than it does to the Crown or elite-driven model it currently does.

An adult workplace is not entirely analagous to a school. You might say that if anything a business should be less accommodating, since the individual with the allergy does not have to work there. But neither do any of the people who like oranges, and as private property Microsoft has latitude to restrict some things. With the allergic child, yes, they are expected to go to school: but so is every other child there who includes milk as a daily part of their diet. Nuts are in a lot of things, but they are not an essential ingredient in nearly any of those things. Not so with dairy. To tell parents their children cannot bring dairy of any kind to school is, I think, a fairly serious imposition on their right to oversee their childs diet.

Why compare them to the Nazis though when their Vichy collaborators would likely be far more appropriate (and apt)?

No offence guys but a couple of these suggestions sound a bit too much like self-congratulatory platitudes. We all love to learn? I have serious reservations about that one. Generalizing is a tricky business, and some of these just are not justified I think. Even Bonam's light-hearted reply, while having a ring of truth to it, does not quite get to the heart of the matter: why do we debate on this forum when there are so many other public venues where we can air our ideas to many more (and more influential) people? Why am I typing this right now instead of looking to Twitter and Facebook again to fill more of my political needs? I would think they have a higher degree of efficacy. I think perhaps we all have a bit of a taste for controversy but lack the desire to see that controversy projected into our real lives. Other than that, what keeps this community going may not be so much similarity but just the fact that it is a community: we just have more regard for conversing with each other than we do for many other people. If I had come back for a bit and it was all new people you can bet that I would not have stuck around long enough to post this.

Inheritance taxes are a virtually useless way to deal with the sort of people this thread is referring to in the short to medium term. Bill Gates will be 60 next year. With his wealth, he could quite reasonably live to be 90. That is roughly the same amount of time between the beginning of WWI and the end of WWII.

Money is power. The richest people hold onto their wealth in part because that is how they maintain power over the companies or institutions that they are members of. I think there is a certain way in which they can be compared to the Assad's and Mugabe's of this world: they are the primary benefactors of a system that has unjustly rewarded them with wealth far beyond what their own innovation could have produced and they refuse to give it up because they love the power, no matter how many people are worse off for their hoarding. People say Bill & Melinda Gates are oh-so charitable, but if you are among the very richest people in the world with fortunes measured in the tens of billions the fact is that you are not really that charitable. A truly charitable person could not hoard so much for themselves to begin with.

Harper's love of Israel is all fine and well but to pretend that being a friend of Israel is a sufficient condition to be a dutiful prime minister of Canada is to exhibit willful blindness. One need only observe Question Period to determine that his principles obviously do not include telling the truth or taking responsibility for mistakes and misdeeds. And if your principles do not executing such important duties as those of a head of government truthfully that is, on other hand, a sufficient condition for determining that you are not a principled person.

I wonder about productivity these days, because intuition seems to seriously contradict evidence. You would think that a man can force himself to work extra time over 40 hours and enrich himself in proportion to how much overtime he worked. But the more you work the more your productivity per hour falls. I have heard that what presaged the 40 hour work week was research that ~40 hours was all you could get out of people without harming their productivity; that working them too more much than that on a continuing could even cause their product for the week to fall. I have also heard that we have about 6 good hours of mental work in us per day. I fear the problem is that the average manager relies overly much on their flawed intuitions about how much work you can get out of people and not on actual evidence.

Well, uh, now that we have had a nice rousing discussion that reminds me of why I decided to stop posting here while I had other opportunities for debating elsewhere, maybe we can get back to the normal day to day grind of cryptically insulting each other in context of a normal, not meta, topic of discussion , . Though I kind of appreciate the reminder about what AW was like. I know back earlier it was suggested that she would become a "legend of the forum" like Oleg, but I was actually having a hard time remembering my impression of her. Every time I come back I tend to have forgotten a lot of the behaviours and political positions I associate even with those members whose names I remember well enough. Only some, mainly the old timers, remain clear.

For what reason is generalizing about people from a small town being inbred and deformed acceptable in this day and age?

How much less tyrannical is "legal liability" than the governments of old?

Huge loss for Canada. I have had issue with a couple of the things he has said in the past but the way he has stood up for our institutions recently has more than made up for it.

Because comments are not letters to the editor, even though they may sometimes be similar. Also, newspapers have limited space, a problem Huffington Post does not. That means people who cannot supply their name are easily weeded out by time conscious editors.

What thread were American Woman's closing remarks in anyway, if I may ask? Or what thread was it that caused the break? And who was the other person who wanted their account deleted?

Things like this may keep me posting here where otherwise I may be inclined to quit. I like being able to post speculative opinions and that is just not as easy when everyone knows who you are. You would think that people would get that given the longstanding institution of the secret ballot. You guys all know I can be an asshole from time to time but I think I keep it reasonably clean. I would not be surprised if much of the behaviour they hope to stop is not actually prevented because what many people assume to be their untouchability is not in fact based on anonymity. The more or less civilized people with unpopular opinions will be the most dissuaded.

How do you measure the wealth of a dictator?

I think there is perhaps some exaggeration here. I do not think there is any way Russia could exactly mirror the level of totalitarian control in North Korea (which had clamped down on its citizens long before the Information Age). But there is definitely something to be said for the worry. I would be interested to know how China would feel about Russia following the North Korean model though. I was under the impression that they tolerate the Kim's because of shared history, not because they like them or their insanity. I could imagine the Chinese distancing themselves from a Russia that goes that route.

So it appears things may be getting serious in Ukraine. Protesters are pissed off enough that they decided to take it out on the statue of Lenin. I wonder how much more Russia will put on the board to try and pull Ukrainians kicking and screaming, literally, back into their sphere. This fight could very well be a pivotal one in the battle over Russian influence in the World today. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/08/kiev-protesters-lenin-statue_n_4408550.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=Canada

You always were very good at dressing up your lack of judgement, August. I mean that as a backhanded compliment. You could spoil your ballot. That is an entirely legitimate thing you could do. There is absolutely no reason in our system that one cannot both respect the institution of the ballot and at the same time tell everyone on it to screw off. To vote for Harper though is to embrace a state of willful blindness as to the absolute lack of conservation in his manhandling of public institutions.

Is there no way to accomodate soldiers with PTSD with homefront deployments? I understand the principle that the military wants people who can be deployed overseas, but other logics are available. If there ever were an actual military attack on Canadian soil would anyone be saying that the diagnosis of PTSD alone was enough to bench a soldier?