xul

The reactor of Chernobyl is a Soviet-designed High Power Channel-type Reactor(RBMK). Its structure and design is very different from the Pressurized Water Reactor(PWR)used in North America, Western Europe, China and Japan. The Chernobyl disaster took place because there was a design flaw in the reactor which would make the control rod jammed if the reactor overheated. The operator just could not stop the nuclear chain reaction in the RBMK so the overheated core of the reactor exploded and the explosion destructed the reactor casing which was used to contain the radioactive material of the core. To a PWR, even if the core of the reactor is overheated, the fuel rods will melt and fall down to the bottom of the casing so the chain reaction will be spontaneously stopped. The explosion in Japan was just because of the hydrogen gas which came from the release valve. The reactor casing is still intact(that's very important). The explosion is totally chemical and outside the reactor casing. Before the explosion, the chain reaction in the core had already stopped and the amount of radioactive material released from the release valve was very small because the reactor casing was still undamaged. The property and consequence of this event are more like the Three Mile Island accident's in the USA, though the Hydrogen released from the reactor didn't exploded in the Three Mile Island accident.

It will not be a real war because, unlike the time of the Kosovo War, the biggest war fan in the world now is at the state of "insufficient funds"---which used to prompted out when my son was playing a computer war game called Red Alert by spending too much on tanks, planes and warships.....when he was 4 years old.

Maybe some complainers are super-billionaires who used to spend the first hour of each day on these: 1. reading quarter statements from the CEOs who run their business and the bankers who manage their money; 2. talking to the conservative MPs whom they funded to represent their interests and questioning them why their boss hasn't introduced some brain-washing machines into Canada to flash every Canadian's mind into the same like the BIOSs in computers; 3. painfully signing the checks to pay the income tax which was allegedly cooked up by liberal politicians for funding immigrants; then, they spending the rest hours of the day before their computers complaining to release their pain, so their posts outnumbered those working people's---who are supposed to have little time to blah, blah, blah.....

Just see who are the lifesavers behind Harper's economic success... The first is Bush, who went into Iraq but made the war "unwinnable" which started the unrest in the oil-rich region and raised the oil price to the highest point in history; Then the second one is Chinese dictator, who after Bush messed up American economy had pulled the oil price back to its highest point just in one year, by using cheap labour force to stimulate Chinese economy effectively of course Now Gaddafi come out, who has been pushing oil price to the new height by threating to destory all Libyan oil facilities just for keeping him to linger in power.... As another important oil exporter in the world, how would Canada's economy not be successful?

I think you just haven't figured out how right you are... There is a joke: Scotty was the King of the most backward third-world country Kanada. He was also the only capitalist of the country and all other his countrymen were his slaves working in his factory called ScottyMart. The slaves worked 16 hours everyday without any payment, so they didn't need to pay tax. King Scotty horsed around 24 hours a day but took all the profits of the business so he was the only one paying taxes in the nation. One day, Kanada's god Harper, after coming to China to lecture Chinese dictator how to respect Lama rights and freedom of brain manipulation, came to Kanada to lecture King Scotty how to respect the worker rights and the freedom of being a free human. "No, no way!" King Scotty yelled at his god, "if these slaves paid any taxes into Kanada's revenue, I would regard their rights, but they didn't. So why should they have the very rights on par with me? Considering what you are saying, you are not my beloved conservative-economist god any more. Get out of my palace..."

Like Mao of China and Fidel Castro of Cuba, Harper has the charisma of making simple-minded people to believe that he will be some sort of lifesaver of them though he isn't...I bet the conservative "economist" boss has the least intention to be it.

because the part of your or my brain carrying the soul is still working...... A man is identified----by his fingerprints----I guess FBI/KGB-kinds would like this. Just imagine, if some mischievous ET kids came to Earth and exchanged Obama's soul with Gahdafi's, whom would be your president? I think if a body no longer carries its soul, it will not be regarded as a lived man. I think there isn't any patient who has the right to force a doctor giving him or her an operation if the doctor thinks it is no good for him or her, though I agree he or she has the right to choose another doctor.

Could they be more sure of this than a doctor? Prolonging someone's life another six months by the means of making him or her barely breath. What is this different from waterboarding someone six months? I think it is all about who should have the right to decide the child's treatment, the doctors or the parents? Do you think parents or patients(if they are adult) should have the right to force doctors to give their children or themselves a certain treatment even if the doctors consider the treatment useless or more harmful?

then, after the war on terror, Uncle Same will play the "bad guy" again by shooting at pirate along with "innocent civilians"(since pirates don't wear uniforms like Taliban, they are all "civilians" before being caught in action), meanwhile others, like European, Russian, Chinese and Canadian of course, will play the sane, compassionate and humanitarian good guys before Africans by shooting at Uncle Same with slogans like "you should distinguish between pirates and civilians...."

According to what I read from the stories about the Chinese sailors who encountered the pirates, most ships were captured by pirates because of lacking wariness and surveillance. The pirates went into the sea so far that the sailors of cargo ships felt they were safe there. The pirates approached the cargo ship from stern at night when most sailors had gone to bed. A few sailors on duty were in the bridge so they had no way to find the pirate before they stepped aboard the ship. Some Chinese cargo ships which has successfully stopped the pirates aboard because their captains put lookouts at the stern. Once the sailors were alerted, they would be able to stop the pirates by cutting off the ropes which the pirate threw up to the weather deck. The gunnel of a merchant ship is so high that pirates has no way to climb aboard the ship without these ropes. The problem is that a modern merchant ship is so supermatic that there usually are only a few sailors aboard. There are just not enough hands aboard for keeping 24h surveillance all the way.

Human being isn't a species which genetically respects fellow human beings or laws. "Civilized" human beings like American and Canadian relatively respect other human beings' human rights or laws because they live in a country where their human rights are also respected by their fellow human beings. As a developing country, Media in China have less western-versioned political correctness so I can read something very different from what we read from western media, such as "the Somalian pirate captured by South Korean Navy said the food in SK prison were delicious". A Chinese sailor, who had been captured by Somalian pirates for 6 months, wrote an article telling his experience. He said the so-called pirate wasn't the pirates which we were familiar form the novel Treasure Island. He said the Somalian pirate were just some poor peasants and fishers hired by local Warlords, a kind of militia. Warlords took all the ransoms and what the pirates got was merely some food, which the Chinese sailor said "he would never lay an eye on it if he wasn't kidnapped and had anything else to eat". Though the Chinese sailor was a victim of Somalian piracy, but I can feel from his article that he still put great sympathy on his captors. Just imagine, if you were a Somalian...I guess you would say, "I'm rather prefer to die than being a pirate!" But please being patient, just imagine, if you were a Somalian, with a family of 12 kids who you knew well that if you died they would all die because there were not any "liberal" politicians to creat a welfare system for them....I think such a scenario is what the Hollywood humanitarian movies always avoid to go in. I think what Somalian really need is to restore order. Anyone, I mean kings, queens, dictators, communists, fascists or warlords, anyone could restore order in Somalia should be supported by international community. Anyway, human beings only respect laws when they used to be protected by laws.

No, it isn't the reason. Pets are allowed because Canadian taxpayers don't need to pay the bill for the medicares of others' pets'.

Pets are allowed into Canada without visas, but parents aren't included....they are supposed to apply via another catalog.

That's true. But there are not a lof of professors, engineers, managers....who have illiterate wives and idiotic kids. Harper can not get majority by harming the interests of the majority of the voters---I suppose the majority of the voters are not immigrants at all. There isn't a policy which can be good for all "existing Canadians" or can be bad for all of them. If there is a poor shop assistant immigrant came, I think most "existing shop assistant" will not be happy but their bosses and managers will be happy. And if there is a rich shop boss immigrant came, I think the existing shop assistant will be happy but their bosses will not be happy at all. I bet that when the forefathers of the most of "existing Canadian" came to Canada, they might also have had to live in the relative poor conditions for years before they could find a way to make a good life. If Canadian believe that the system of their country is just and fair, or relatively just and fair , they should have confidence that a diligent and hardworkinig immigrant eventually may make a good life in Canada. If Canadian don't want to fund immigrants to get through their first a few years, they can ask their politicians changing the immigration laws and demand immigrants to bring more money from their home countries to fund themselves getting though the hard first years. It seems like your won values is kinda different from the values of some of your "existing" countrymen expressed under this thread, so what would you suggest Harper to do? Importing some Tian An Men tanks from China for Canadian army guys to squash the "unorthodox value" out of them? Could you name the streets where the potential slums are so everyone could google-street-view them? I have been looking for buying a home from MLS for a month. I'm under the impression that the street view of some old residential areas nearby the downtown of Toronto aren't very good. I can see the TV cables and Tel wires flying directly into the houses from the lamppost like some kinds of "skynet", but I think it is just because the houses there are old. There are new houses in the outer areas and towns of the city and I know a lot of Chinese immigrants buy their homes there. I think the landscaping of the buildings and streets in these areas is fairly planned and can hardly be related with slum, though the lot size of the new housese is sure smaller than those old houses---a kind of side-effect of growing population and immigrants.

I have to tell Canadian that the Tories are partially the cause of Canadian immigration problem. 4 years ago, the CPC was electied. Its immigration minister told Canadian there were about 600,000 applications of immigration in the backlog. Merely a few months later, the Minister told the parliament that the backlog had increased into 1,000,000, so she had to force the parliament to pass the bill C-50 to fix it. The bill C-50 was passed, and Canada still receives about 250,000 immigrants each year. Thus, Canada has received over 1 million immigrants since then so there would no longer be any backlogs. But if anyone asks the Tories, they will tell you there still are 600,000 in the backlog and they have gone back to the start point when they were elected. If someone may wonder what the conservatves have been doing since the bill passed and what is the function of the bill C-50, I will suggest him to check the CIC website. There is a chart which shows that the waiting time of applications applied after the C-50 bill is about a year so he may think the conservative at least has reduced the waiting times. But if he checks another chart of those applied before the C-50, he will find the waiting time has increased into over 5-7 years---under the same conservative rule. If there is anyone who doesn't understand what I'm talking about, I can make a joke to explain: There was a thread stated that most Canadian need to wait months for MRI, so Harper vowed to fix it for Canadian. The conservative boss passed the ministerial decree No.C-500000, which stated like this: each MRI applications applied after the ministerial decree will be processed as a priority. Then he came to TV and told Canadian that he had fixed the problem by reducing the waiting time of those applied after his C-500000 decree to a few days. He just forgot mentioning that the waiting time of those applied before his bill had increased to a few yeas... If someone feels curious why the backlog had increased dramatically just a few months later after the conservative was elected, I will have to tell him this is why I said the conservative was partially the cause of the problem. In the time of Liberal rule, applying Canada immigration was a difficult job. You had to have years of professional jobs, you had to pass English or French level tests...and then you had to submit all these support documents to CIC with you application. When the conservative was elected, I don't know why, but I think it might be a gesture to do the immigrants a favour, their immigration minister declared that CIC would no longer demanded the support documents for appling Canada immigration. What a applicant needed to do was just to fill a form and mail it to a CIC office. The documents would only be needed when the immigration officer processed his application. I think everyone now can see the flaw of the plan. If there is a Chinese who can not read English at all but wants to apply Canada immigration, there will be no problem---he can fill the form tell immigration officer that his English is excellent and begins to study. When the immigration officer processes his application, which is supposed to be 4 years later, his English might be excellent. Or there is an Indian kid who is only in high school, don't worry, 7 years later---that's the waiting time in his hometown, he would have graduated from a college and would be an professional, so he can also fill the form stated him as a professional.... Just imagine, if anyone who can apply MRI without a doctor reference.....

You are correct. Technically, they may find the attack coming from China, but they have no way to figure out who is behind it. They even have no way to know if the hacker was in China when the attack happened. Since there are too many poor internet users in China who favours "free software" which they download from internet, their computers can easily be controlled by hackers. The hacker who started the attack might not be a Chinese or might not live in China. He or she can remotely control his victims's computes via internet to launch the attack.

Even Canadian MPs can not get necessary information from the government. Parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page: Government secrecy hampering MPs' jobs Maybe Canadian MPs have to hire hackers to get what they need to do their job...

Just like those Iranian and Venezuelan army officers to do nothing but watch their new bosses kicking Uncle Sam's ass....

The (floating) rate went down in previous years to round up borrowers, and now it's time to raise the rate and round up the money. and once most borrowers have hastly shifted into fixed rate at the highest point, the rate will fall back again to round up more borrowers....

I'm afraid that in the major cities of bjre's hometown you usually only needs a few hours to wait for a MRI examination. In China, their are not family doctors. People used to go to hospitals directly to see a doctor without an appointment. The advantage of the system is that the patients don't need to wait for long to access some facilities like MRI or see an specialist becasuse there always have enough patients to keep these departments and facilities of a hospital running with full capacity. I guess pliny may like the system. Just imagine, if there isn't any small stores and shops but only Walmart in Canada, the productivity of each salesperson(the doctor) will be maximized. The disadvantage of the system is obvious. Most of the patients need to go a long way for seeing a doctor. Doctors may spend more time to read the medical record of a chronic patient because he can't remember him, meanwhile other patients have to wait, being murdered.

Great idea! So Moonbox could claim himself a psychiatrist and send you to a madhouse....

I agree with you. There is nothing more important than telling and facing the truth. If the political correctness has the power to stop everyone acting like a real man but an ET, it will be totally political incorrect at all. Anyway, being an earthling isn't a shame and an earthing sometime is realistic. As for BC2004, honestly I like to read his posts, I mean, most of them . I think many people may disagree with his way, but only a few may deny, in most cases, he was just telling the painful truth.

Maybe thing isn't as worse as everyone thinks. Watching CNN-kinds's news you should just watch---that means you should just watch the video meanwhile turns off the speakers so the "story" of their "writers" will not mislead you. When I did this way, I found it was very familiar with what I saw in Beijing 1989. There are two groups of protestors---a few mobs and many peaceful protestors. The mobs are CNN-kinds's favored boys because they are very useful to make impressive pictures for helping the writers to sell their "stories", so they have taken over Egypt, LOL, taken over our TV screens. I think in any nation this kind of loser is just the minority of the population, they may act as tinder to spark the fire, but have no ability to control its trend. The second group is the majority. They go to the street because they are tired of watching one guy having taken over the center of their TV screens for so long time. But this group also needs to worry about their loss if the revolution comes true. So Mubarak's strategy is just, as Deng did in 1989 Beijing, to wait and let the discontent of this group wears off on the street meanwhile position his troops for the final blow. Anyway, that the soldiers didn't shoot protestors doesn't mean that they will not shoot them once they are given orders. And that we can see a lot of protestors confronting dumb tanks doesn't mean they will still be there if the tanks fire. Maybe what Mubarak is doing is just to negotiate with his "comrades" and generals of the ruling party to share the power, just as Deng did in 1989. When the negotiation is over, the "protest" will be over.

I guess it would come out if Mubarak was out and his successor, regardless whoever he was, could not make those poor rioters a better life because Uncle Sam no longer had the economic muscle to support a country as big as Egypt, so he had to find a new funder....

I think it's that the Pentagon-kinds prop the dictators because of their military-map-correctness meanwhile the CNN-kinds undermine these dictators's regimes due to their political-correctness. Just imagine, if a python tried to engulf its tail by its mouth, what would come out?