Wild Bill

Yeah, they have whined a bit but still, when they say "but the Liberals" that doesn't change the fact that it's true! Proving one side down never brings your own side up. We rise or fall on our own merits. As I have said many times, I will vote Tory but only by default. When they steal as much money as the Liberals did with AdScam then maybe it will be time to switch.

Did you know that the burka custom is only a decade or two old? It is no more a heritage thing than a tie-dyed tshirt! Great tool to irritate the "great european satans", though.

Well, this story has quite a different twist! http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national...81-d15c60126e40 "The poll says the proportion of Canadians who favour an election "to clear the air" has risen to 40 per cent from 27 per cent in March. Moreover, the proportion of Canadians who said "there's no need for an election at the moment" dropped dramatically to 38 per cent from 66 per cent. Almost one in four, or 23 per cent, said they did not know which statement best captured their views, up from seven per cent in March." Quite an interesting read. I guess it all depends on whose newspaper you read. The Star has been claiming something quite different. Harris-Decima is taking a stand but they always seem to be wrong. Anyhow, just FYI.

They're not misleading anyone! They give according to how much they're paid! It is far more important to a particular party to have a riding breakdown than an overall combined number. Just think about the logistics and costs of getting an idea of the popular vote across the province and finding out the chances of the Tories carrying Guelph. Guelph people are totally different than those of most of Toronto. Yet Toronto has FAR more people to poll! Take it as mere smoke blowing if you want. To me it seems just money and simple math. I sincerely hope the Liberals see no need for deeper polls as well.

Well, if you want a cross section that's useful you have to poll individual ridings, or at least different areas of the province. You could poll 10,000 people but if they are all in Toronto then the result would look like a Liberal landslide, yet the election result could well be that Toronto has the only Liberal ridings in the province and the Tories did very well over all. With polls, you get what you pay for. Parties of course will pay for much more riding focused polls than newspapers. They have no obligation to share these more accurate polls with the citizenry. It usually is not in their interest.

I haven't made up my mind on whether or not the climate is changing. I've only lived for 56 years, after all. The Earth is far older than that. We've only been keeping records for an eyeblink in the world's history. As for the debate being over, sorry! That strikes me as just a debating tactic to shut up the opposition. I'm a science and tech kind of guy. When you can prove to me that the Universe gives a damn about consensus as to explanations of how it works then maybe I'll believe you. We've had consensus about the Earth being flat and the centre of the universe as well. You've got scientists that make sense to you and so have I. So what? Reality will prove out. Am I willing to take the risk? I certainly am! Why? Precisely because I've always been a science kid! This whole climate change movement strikes me as so riddled with politics and frankly outright loopiness that I just can't lend it any credence. It always looks like the ones leading the charge are the poli-sci majors from Queens U and Ryerson, and rarely the engineers. You might walk around a campus with a petition about climate change and get 100% of the students to sign it. However, if 92% of the signatures came from arts majors and only 8% from engineers then your "consensus" may not be all that accurate. When even one dissenting scientist loses his grant money and his livelihood for not going along with the climate change movement then any claim of true science has been tainted, at least to me.

What's your point? Why would anyone who disagreed with the premise want to pay for nothing of value? Are you suggesting people MUST agree with you? Geez, at least the Witness at my door on a weekend morning ASKS me and doesn't TELL me to read his magazine!

Sorry! First off, "wiki" is hardly gospel! That being said, it would appear that Erebus is just a custom chip produced with western technology by western companies like Sunn Microsystems. At least, according to your very own wiki link! This is nothing new. The various facets of microcomputers and all the glue chips have become simple building blocks and can be etched on the same wafer of silicon. All of this is western technology. Only the specific Erebus design would be Russian. So have the Russians built their own supercomputer chip> Yes, they have. Does this mean they have any true capacity in that field? No, it doesn't. I have a personal friend who is an ex-pat Russian. He actually worked on their lunar probes and the like. He has confirmed to me first hand of how these things have always worked in Russian. It goes back to WWII, when Russia accepted Allied fighter planes, re-marked them and told the peasantry they were planes developed by Russia! To be fair, all this proves is that Russia has been notoriously poor at developing the resources and infrastructure of these high tech electronic areas. Ex-pat engineers like my friend are in great demand in the West as designers. They grew up in a system of good education but poor access to materials. They are geniuses at getting the most out of the least and make the most cost-effective designs anywhere.

Your entire argument is based on the premise that climate change is not just real but within man's control. Not everyone agrees with your premise. To you it may be gospel but to others its just your personal opinion. You seem to feel that taxing folks like me will save us from ourselves. We see it as you are hurting us for nothing but a mistaken premise. When do folks like me get to tax folks like YOU for something? Let's start with country music. Nail on a sky-high tax and maybe we can reduce consumption!

And while we're imagining, one would imagine that if an immigrant who came here under family reunification was of working age and form he or she could have applied on their own. Family reunification suggests older parents, grandparents and aged aunts and uncles. As I said, you tend not to see them on construction sites. The situation today is dramatically different than that of the 50's, by a quantum level. Yet every time one even tries to bring the subject up for debate someone starts trying to drown you out with cries like "Canada needs immigrants! Immigrants built this country!" I'm never sure if they are mentally challenged with such simple concepts or have an agenda. Or both!

Exaggeration? I think of it as hyperbole, myself! And no one has forced me to live in Toronto, thank heavens! Force is what it would take before I'd make that choice. I would find David Miller and his council far too frustrating. Toronto is totally different than any other part of Ontario. Or maybe even Canada. Or maybe even Earth! At the very least they should be given provincial status to prevent them from getting all the political attention and leaving the rest of the province dangling. "You can do this today still. You're just not going to be eating out much, your kids will be wearing hand-me-downs with patches, you'll be driving a jalopy and you'll never go anywhere for vacation...just like families from the 1950's. " Geez, with two incomes we're doing that now!

I'm afraid that this whole story of a Russian computer chip strikes me as bogus! You see, I was part of that whole high tech wave! I started off selling the very first microcomputer chips. I sold the Intel 8080, the 8085, 8086, Pentiums and so on. I was there before the IBM PC was even created. Russia was desperate to get such parts but because of the Iron Curtain trade restrictions they had to go to outlandish lengths to smuggle them into their empire. Canada was a useful conduit for them. Many Montreal brokers made fortunes buying from franchised distributors like us and then taking them as carryon luggage on a plane to Poland or Estonia. The big hurdle in producing them yourself is the necessary infrastructure. There is so much involved in all the myriad facets of producing ANY integrated circuit, let alone one as complicated as a supercomputer chip that Russia just couldn't do it for themselves. No room for a "mom and pop" operation. You either enter the game as a full fledged manufacturer capable of making and presumably selling in huge quantities or you just can't play at all. It's possible Russia has some obsolete machinery and is capable of making a few older chips but this would be extremely inefficient for the cost and the payoff. It makes much more sense to take another tack. You scrape off the markings off a useful chip and laser print your own! This was done all the time to disguise the source of integrated circuits destined to be smuggled behind the Iron Curtain! I've actually held such "counterfeit" remarked devices in my own hands. I suspect this Russian claim is actually such a rebranded device.

My original opinion was formed from a book, "The Trouble with Canada", by William Gairdner. It's a little outdated now. Pgs 414 and 415 refer to a 1982 report to Parliament on immigration levels and the mix of family reunification. It also refers to a report from Employment and Immigration, Hull Office, in 1990, that told of how with the 1990 backlog of immigrants of 175,000 only 24,000, or 16% would actually have to qualify under the point system. 84% would just walk through the door under family reunification programs and the like. The book also quotes a minister of the day, Don Blenkarn, that an average of 30 family members followed each family class immigrant to Canada. Page 415 cites a story from the December 30, 1987 Globe and Mail about an immigrant who set a world record over 17 years by sponsoring 60-70 family members into Canada. So now I tried a google. I went to the StatsCan site first. I searched but could not find any report with a breakdown of how many immigrants are admitted under the point system as workers we need and how many are dependents. I find that odd in itself! I did find a few things: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/pub...on3.asp#table_4 Scroll down halfway through and look at Table 4 for the above. The Canadian Council for Refugees has a paper: http://www.ccrweb.ca/FRBackgrounder2007.pdf They start right off complaining about a 60/40 split between the economic and family/refugee categories. Here's a plan for 2008: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/me.../2007-10-31.asp Perhaps this gives one an impression of how many are workers and how many are just family: Highlights of the Report The Immigration Plan for 2008 * In 2008, the government plans to admit between 240,000 and 265,000 new permanent residents. The 2008 immigration levels are in line with abalanced immigration program that aims to meet Canada’s labour market needs while fostering family reunification and honouring the humanitarian principles of refugee protection. * Between 139,000 and 154,000 new permanent residents will be admitted in the Economic Class in 2008. To respond to labour market needs, growing admissions in the Provincial Nominee Program will be accommodated and a new avenue to immigration will be introduced, the Canadian Experience Class. To be implemented in 2008, this new stream will enable certain temporary foreign workers and international students with Canadian degrees and Canadian work experience to apply for permanent residency from within Canada. * Reuniting families is an important principle of Canada’s immigration policy and legislation. The 2008 levels plan upholds Canada’s support for family reunification by planning for between 68,000 and71,000 admissions of spouses, partners, dependants, parents and grandparents in 2008. * Each year, Canada protects many thousands of people through the in-Canada refugee protection system and the resettlement of refugees selected abroad. The plan also maintains strong refugee admissions: between 26,000 and 31,800 permanentresidents will be admitted in this category. Up to an additional 8,000 newpermanent residents could also be accepted for humanitarian and compassionate reasons. Now compare all this with the case of my inlaws who came from Italy in 1950. A man and his wife who BOTH were young and immediately started working! They worked hard and have done well. That's 100% immigration in the economic class and 0% Family Reunification! They paid far more in taxes over the years to Canada than they ever took back. I'm proud of them! THAT"S the kind of immigrant Canada has always needed!

Well, a couple of those listings were trailer homes and one listed no bedrooms or bathrooms but still, I see your point. However, Newcastle? Durham? Do you consider that within an hour's drive? Do you live in the area yourself or are you just looking at the map scale? I was an outside salesman for years in that area and some days it would take me over an hour just to get from one side of Toronto to the other. If there was holiday weekend traffic there were times it took me 3 to 4 hours! The amount of traffic congestion can be unbelievable if you haven't experienced it for yourself. There's a big difference between the theory of being within a radius of 50 miles and being able to actually traverse those 50 miles.

Also, when our level of military resources is so low he must have realized that we just couldn't participate in both actions! After all the criticism of the Liberal cuts to the forces there's no way he would have set himself up for the embarrassment.

I've said this before but it always bears repeating. The bulk of our immigration in the 50's came from younger folks eager to work. Today its refugees and family reunification. Grandparents and old maiden aunts tend not to apply for construction jobs.

Better check that MLS again. Yes, you are correct that you can find such houses. The problem is that they all will involve a 1500 km. commute to work every day.

I'm sorry, but whenever I hear the need to "change our behaviour" as a justification for being taxed more severely I just want to scream! It just seems so elitist and patronizing. On my opening Sympatico webpage yesterday there was a link to some report about how despite the record gasoline prices Canadians still "haven't changed their behaviour". Are these folks blind? Most Canadians changed their behaviour years ago! Pleasure driving is almost unheard of anymore, except for the annual vacation trip. The price of gas over the past decade has increased to the point where people drive mostly for necessity, like commuting to work. When articles such as the one on the Sympatico link mention how there's no sign of more people turning to public transit they seem unaware that the reason is...public transit usually sucks! People in my part of the country are locked into up to several hours of commuting time a day. Public transit, if available at all, usually would increase that time by double or treble. People are time poor. They are NOT going to switch to a public transit system that takes away even more time from their daily lives! My wife works for the City of Hamilton. They often are given cheerleading sessions to lead by example by using public transit. We live in the built up part of the city, not out in the sticks at all. If she were to take the bus a 10 minute drive would become a 90 minute trip. That's without considering the inconvenience of weather and the walk to bus stops at both ends. So the obvious answer is that there is little room left to change behaviour. It would seem that only people in academic situations insulated from these real world pressures are unaware of this. Everybody's bleeding the same poor old horse and assuming the horse can easily replenish what's been taken. The problem is that there are a great number of interests bleeding the horse who seem blissfully unaware of anyone but themselves doing the bleeding and just how much blood is being taken in total. Unless all the leeches are put in their place the poor horse is doomed.

Effective allies would be nice. Decent helicopters might be better.

I'm afraid that when I read your arguments and your links from my own technical perspective I get a very different impression than yours. It's all academic wishes in early stages of research, not fully developed technologies about to be put into practice. I've been reading such things in Popular Science since the 60's! Meanwhile, the idea of taxing us to bring about technological innovation is not in a research stage at all. Dion would like to implement it right now! The idea of how much and how long it will take to achieve these technological breakthroughs seems totally taken for granted. It's the argument of an academic, not an engineer or a technician. Like a teacher who has never actually done something but he has read a lot of books and is sure that it would be easy. I'm really starting to get worried. If Dion achieves power and implements his plan my kids are going to get very hungry very quickly. As for myself, I guess I could stand to lose some weight. Just wish it was for some positive good.

First off, the article does not say the Navy will use fuel cells in the DD-21 ship. They say they are INTERESTED in fuel cell technology! That's nice. Lots of people are also interested. What the article does say is that they are going to use turbines to power electric motors. This is nothing new. Lots of ships have been doing this for decades. So have locomotives. A big turbine powers electric motors to pull the train. It is a more efficient system than having diesel engines turn a driveshaft directly and also a bit cleaner but hardly new or earthshattering. Sorry. Just not a big deal.

You don't always have to. It can be enough to make such an attack too expensive. It would also make us look like an effective partner to our allies, instead of the country that always sends the canteen ship.

There's still the issue of time available when both partners have to work to maintain their standard of living, at whatever level. How feasible is it for Mom to stay home and raise a couple more kids, in this day and age?

Did I miss something? I thought your original premise was that our living standard ranking has increased, not decreased, and that we have a higher living standard than the Americans. From what I read this paper seemed to be saying that our ranking has slipped and that we are even lower when ranked against the Americans. But then, I don't get out much anymore.

http://www.nelp.navy.mil/pdf_cases/P2_Hybr...Tow_Tractor.pdf Surely this isn't it? It will only operate for a maximum of two hours on a charge! Must be something else.