Remiel

While some sort of incentive might be in the cards, I do not think this would work at all. The very first thing that would happen is that any oversight board that was behind in its work would get swamped with phony applications of people seeking to cash is on the free money after their " application " took too long to process.

Perhaps I should have been more explicit about what I meant. There are no legal restrictions on selling private property in Israel. But they are definitely social ones.

It would only be dishonest if it were only the party name on those ballots. Having party names on the ballots with their candidates is more honest than not. The dishonestly lies not in the ballots, but in the failure to correct voters mistaken impressions about their party system. If a voter does not understand how the system works before they go into the voting booth, it is a failure that cannot be corrected by playing games with the ballots.

Is the problem in this case so much the legal ability to sell, or the willingness to only sell to certain people? When you point out a case where Palestinians sold land to Jews, it seems ironic that when the tables are turned, that same land, once partioned into housing, is not available for Palestinians to buy back. Neither the Palestinians nor the Jews in Israel have, as a whole, anything to brag about when it comes to cohabitation.

You know, nevermind. I am just going to have to learn to avoid threads on voting reform if I do not want to have to listen to Machjo say the same thing about getting rid of parties he said in five other threads...

I do not know what his background is really like outside of his credentials, but as credentials go, now is certainly a good time to have someone versed in constitutional law to be the Governor General. Such an academic is exactly what is required right now. An expert to deal in matters requiring expertise.

Five days ago a recruitment centre for the Canadian Forces was bombed in Trois-Rivieres, Quebec. I started a thread that day and posted this article from the Toronto Star on it: http://www.thestar.com/news/quebec/article/831182--group-claims-responsibility-for-quebec-canadian-forces-office-blast However, we never really got around to talking about it. Why not? Does no one really care? Is all of our concern about terrorism really just for show, or a facade? Of course, it could be argued perhaps that going by a strict definition, it may not technically be terrorism. I am not sure whether they were " trying to influence people politically through fear " or just being a bunch of douchebags. Either way though, it should concern us all when someone takes it upon themselves to blow up a place primarily visited by young people looking to serve their country. Strangely enough, I am not sure if the Star actually published a follow up article. Maybe they knew it would not be a buzz starter, as it has proven not to be here. In fact, most of the stories a quick search of Google brings up are from the day of the blast, though there is this piece from the next days Montreal Gazette: http://www.montrealgazette.com/Cops+seek+help+Trois+Rivi%C3%A8res+bombing/3233116/story.html Unfortunately it does not appear to offer much new information, either. So, who among you is concerned with the bombing?

Forums are not troves of good discussion on things that really matter. This thread was started because a person noticed that the name was spelled incorrectly; but so what? If they had noticed instead that some other government building had been spelled incorrectly and started the thread, no one would be saying, " There was a recruitment centre bombing we should be talking about instead of spelling! " You're right that it is kind of odd very little has been said about the bombing, but in terms of how forums work, a bombing is not a reason not to have a discussion on national spelling traditions.

Hardly. There would be no such discussion here if Max Webster had not gotten bent out of shape over spelling... It is not just a Canadian thing.

What makes you think Conrad Black is going to be welcomed back into the United Kingdom?

I sense another thread going nowhere in a hurry.

What does it matter if anyone else spells it in some other way? I assume that the existence and history of the Oxford Dictionary does not count as a reason for most Americans to discard Webster. The only spelling that counts is the one in the society where you are. In some ways it is like money: I can choose to accept Canadian and American dollars as suitable equivalents, but that does not change the fact that only the Canadian dollar counts as legal tender in this country. Also, I did actually start a thread on the bombing the day it happened. But it got sidetracked before it could become a debate. I may have been involved in this sidetracking.

Wikipedia makes me think it is the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.

There is more than one way to want power, and more than one thing to want it for. " What can we do to get power? " and " Why is no one giving us power? " are fundamentally different questions. It is the difference between wanting power for the sake of enjoying it, and wanting power for the sake of which it is given. After all, there is a sense in which anyone who accuses a politician of wanting power is incredibly stupid: the very job to which a politician aspires is the wielding of power; requires it. It is like accusing a fireman of wanting to put out fires.

A question along similar lines I think is whether it would be possible to have a system that worked where exemplary " store clerks, factory workers, dental hygienists, taxi drivers, copes, firemen, lab technicians, fishermen, loggers, sawmill workers, carpenters and secretaries " were the sort of people who found their way into the Senate. It would be rather ironic in that the names of the houses, the " Commons " and the " Senate " would have reveresed functions.

%#(%*#%*#(%@#_)$@)#$(#($#%*#(%*(#Q That is how I feel after I just erased my entire post because the ctrl key on this laptop is NOT on the outermost bottom left corner. I usually copy my posts so that I do not lose them if there is a posting error. This time however, it is that practice that has screwed me over. To make a long story short though, here is what I was going to say, in point form, all in response to Machjo. - By naturalization, what you call an incorrect use of " hopefully " I would call correct. - The American use of billion is superior to the British/Latin use. When Latin was invented, billion was an academic number. No longer. - If Canada has a spelling reform, that is cool, but until that day, mispelling " centre " as " center " in formal contexts should be no more acceptable than mispelling " dog " as " dawg " .

If you actually bothered to quote the other relevant parts of the article, you would see that that is what it is about in the end. Of course, the best part came last:

What is the incentive of future generations to make substantial sacrifices in order to create benefits they will never see? Nothing is ever colonized for the sake of colonizing. It is colonized to create profits, move excess population, and so forth. There is a difference between looking at something with a telescope and actually getting something there to do in depth analysis. Furthermore, to actuall " see " the entire galaxy, even with telescopes, is not possible. Sometimes things get in the way. With different kinds of telescopes, light bending and all that, that part may not be that big a problem, but that does not change the fact that there is a qualitative difference between scouting with the Hubble Telescope and scouting with the Mars Rover. Anyway, when you said " settle the galaxy " I took you to mean the whole galaxy, not just a chunk of it. Seeing that it is like 100,000 light years across, I thought a light year every two years was crazy. I think it more likely that most of the " colonizing " by that point will be done purely by machines. Making it more like a machine-machine civilization in the outer reaches.

Even when this method is possible, I am skeptical as to whether it would ever be used, unless the children were basically treated as slaves to be brainwashed as their creators see fit. Unless we were colonizing purely for the sake of colonizing, expected benefits would rest entirely on that new society cooperating with whoever sent them; they may not want to.

While I agree that the future lies in outer space, I think your timescale is extremely optimistic even if do invent speed of light travel. It may be possible that we could have scouted the galaxy in that time frame, but not settled it.

Not exactly true, as far as I know... According to my understanding, the Lake of Fire is where you end up if you were not saved from your sins by God. God does not punish you by sending you there on purpose. Dictionary definitions are virtually worthless when it comes to difficult and abstract concepts such as justice. You still do not get the whole picture by associating it with consequences of actions. Meanings shift all the time. Take the word " gay " for instance. Everyone knows that example though. " Justice " would be a good example too. Many Ancient Greeks thought that justice was the interest of the stronger, like Thrasymachus did. However, this very common notion was the subject of much criticism by Socrates. Two people in the same city and the same time did not mean the same thing by " justice " . It should not be such a leap to consider than in thousands of years, with many different version and translations, that something can be lost. Moreover, I think you are too wrapped up in what you think a perfect (ly good) God must do. What you think and what is actually the case on that matter are vastly different things.

Ummm, Shwa... What are you trying to do? Your substitution does not contain as a precept a perfect artist, does it?

That is nuts. The only problem that is going to solve is the disparity in wealth between Canada and many other countries - by making ours poorer.

Your view of justice is impoverished. It is so much more than mere fit punishment for crimes.

Your explanation just does not wash. How would you, an imperfect being, expect to understand what an infinite, omniscient, perfect being is doing? The human mind is not equipped to compute the amount of data necessary to come to an absolutely true understanding of anything, which is why we use so many heuristics bred into us over the eons. Your logic is strained. Do not take it for more than it is though: a critique of your logic, not of your beliefs.