Wild Bill

No, the earth's gravitational pull has been affecting the course for months if not years now! In weightless space, gravity becomes a significant force over vast distances. It doesn't just suddenly jump out and grab something when it gets close, like a spider and a fly! The earth's pull has long since affected the asteroid's orbit. Astronomers who take observations can clearly chart where that asteroid is going. If it were going to hit the earth we would see it NOW! If it's going to miss the earth we could see that as well. It's path is already long laid out.

I read the link. There's a definite "National Inquirer" aura to that site! "Close" flybys happen all the time. A direct course of impact is relatively rare. Just because an asteroid's orbit brings it close is no reason to panic. What's more, observations allow close predicting of an orbit's path. The trajectory is not likely to suddenly change, other than a very small amount due to escaping gases if the asteroid feels some heat from the sun or whatever. However, if you want to sell newspapers, a headline saying a collision is not a lie! A lawyer's trick, maybe but not legally a lie!

Well, I use "bail out" in its broadest sense, stopping subsidies to industries that are not self-sustaining on their own. Oil certainly has and does get subsidies and I would say the industry doesn't deserve them. After all, that industry IS self-sustaining! It won't die without subsidies. I'm a techie, remember? I don't respect industries that only survive because they are propped up for political gain. Wind and solar on a larger scale fall into that category, in my opinion. Obviously, if they WERE profitable and self-sustaining they wouldn't need subsidies! Doh! I don't agree with the idea that just because oil got and gets subsidies it doesn't deserve that wind and solar somehow deserve the same. That's worse than throwing more money down a rat hole! Wind and solar are going to need a LONG time to become profitable - maybe never! So by my yardstick as a techie wind and solar are failures, at least as to how they have been applied on large scales. That being said, again as a techie I have much more hope for smaller, decentralized applications. The collapse of the solar photo-voltaic industry leaves a glut of product on the market, which will allow some fire-sale purchases. The only thing left for a viable solar power solution for the single-home market is a reasonably priced battery bank. In that area I think the electric car might prove to be the answer! As more and more electrics are on the road there will be initially batteries from car wrecks for the do-it-yourselfer to acquire. A few years after that and the price of replacement batteries might well be low enough for the average home solar power installation. Countries seem to think that solar and wind power must be used only by large state utilities. Frankly, once again as a techie that looks to be a rather dumb and ignorant idea! It is "ready for the LAST war!" type thinking, possibly augmented by political desires to retain control. Certainly, viable solar power for individuals is the LAST thing any premier of Ontario would want, what with over 30 BILLION dollars of stranded Ontario Hydro debt still on the books. I don't think they would support any solution that allowed individuals to go "off grid". There would be no more payments for all those extra fixed charges on the monthly bill! Anyhow, to put it more simply Waldo, my definitions are always "techie" definitions. Does something work or doesn't it? Will it be profitable and self-sustaining on its own or won't it? Anytime someone tries to give me some convoluted argument to get around those simple definitions it always seems to end up that their way will never actually work efficiently and will ALWAYS be more expensive!

A school friend of mine went on to become a priest in the Orthodox Church. He received a great deal of schooling about the various Bibles, actually including the original Greek scrolls. He told me of a couple of mistranslations in today's Bibles from those ancient Greek words. One was "Adam" which was apparently not a proper name at all but a plural word meaning "mankind". Obviously this puts a very different slant on the story of Genesis. Another was your quote of the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill." According to my friend and his Church, which historically is the first Christian Church (if you accept that the Roman Catholic Church split off from them over 1100 years ago. The Catholics of course maintain that the other Patriarchs of the time split from THEM!), the word does NOT mean "kill" but rather "murder". Again, quite a significant difference.

My good doctor, as I said before you have warmed my soul that all is not lost! It's just that I believe you represent a much smaller percentage of the population today than the way it was before. I agree with you wholeheartedly however that the Internet makes gives that smaller percentage a far more powerful too than anything formerly available! This is sort of a parallel with the Ebay phenomenon. Before EBay, people wanting to sell yard sale type items were limited to a market of their own neighbourhood. EBay offered a global yard sale, cheap! When the Internet first started really rolling, I vividly recall two examples of this sort of thing that told me the way things were going. The first was a junkyard dealer for motorcycles in northern Ontario. His was the sort of place that did most of its business local but was an underground secret among enthusiasts all over the province. If you needed a part for a 1947 Indian you would give him a call and if he had it you would make a "pilgramage", usually making it a day trip with some buddies of similar interest. This guy recognized right away the potential of the Net and set up a webpage. Almost overnight he was doing a roaring "mail order" style business! The other was with a small business here in my home town that was just two guys above a music store, trying to make a living with the repair of studio equipment and selling the odd vacuum tube to locals. Vacuum tubes are still the mainstay for the music market. As I like to say, virtually all professional and would-be professional guitarists will not use a solid state amp unless you put a gun to their head, for reasons I could explain in a separate thread. This was the dawn of Net online shopping. There were no cheap software packages to set you up with a "shopping cart" system. These guys went out on a limb, mortgaged their souls and spent thousands to buy a custom package and get set up. The first night they went online they went home in a state of anxiety. What if their investment took too long to pay off? When they returned in the morning they had over 50 orders,from all over North America! Since then in the last 10 years they have had to move at least 4 times to larger facilities. They had a niche market product and were given a venue to reach a global market. Anyhow, I think I will start a new thread for this. This one seems about played out anyway. No one is going to change anyone else's mind, it seems. Or that of the people at large!

Waldo, do we really need such an in-depth analysis? How about something more basic, such as "Has Europe bailed out of solar and wind subsidies?" All we really need is a yes/no response. After that we can debate if the decision made economic sense.

You just shocked me so much that I went back and re-read what I had posted, Michael! I said that I could accept religious law deciding a divorce as far as it was recognized by a church. I did NOT say I supported that church making legal decisions as to a settlement of assets! You can be married in the eyes of a church but the true legality rests with civil law. The same should be true as far as a divorce. So if a Sharia court wishes to rule on the validity of a divorce as far as their religious authority goes I am indifferent but if that same court tried to give all assets to the man or even worse, refused to allow the woman to go her own way then I would say that Sharia court should have NO legal recognition! Sharia law is perhaps one of the most repressive legal systems towards women in the modern world.

I didn't think I had called anyone here specifically an "academic elitist", Dre. Certainly I would not have called you one. There are a few others, however... However, I do believe that academic elitism is growing in our society. At the risk of thread drift, I have been noticing for over 30 years a disturbing trend. There is a belief that formal education is the only way to learn anything, along with the converse notion that without a formal education and a certificate to prove it one can not possibly know how to do something or know anything in depth about it. Along with this is the even sillier notion that a university education is some kind of blanket endorsement of a superior knowledge about EVERYTHING! In effect, having any kind of a degree makes your opinion more valid than that of anyone without a degree, no matter what the subject! This is a very strange set of beliefs for someone as old as I am, who grew up when times were different. It was very common for people to have hobbies where they delved deeply into subjects, whether it be carpentry, astronomy, archeological collecting or whatever. Amateurs often became respected authorities on some subjects. Even stranger, so much of this has vanished! There was a time when any variety store magazine rack would feature dozens of do-it-yourself issues, featuring articles on how to make stuff of surprising complexity. Those magazines are long gone! Very few remain, because despite the increase in our population the demand is so low. You have to go to a large bookstore chain like Chapters or Indigo to find any such magazines and if you actually peruse those few available, you find that true do-it-yourself projects have disappeared! What remains are really reviews of finished or nearly finished projects you can purchase. Have you checked out a model store lately? Did you build any models of airplanes or ships when you were young? I remember kits of Spitfires that had many tiny pieces. I spent much time reading and re-reading the instructions to get the model build just right. I saw an airplane kit a year or so ago. I swear, it didn't need glue! Model glue is much harder to source today, since the advent of "glue sniffing". The kit I saw basically had two halves that snapped together! Afterwards you stuck on a few decals and that was the entire process. For the self-education of today's kids we give them "Models for Dummies". The degree of specialization amongst the "educated" of today also distresses me. There is less and less general knowledge of what my generation considered a normal baseline. My own lifetime passion has been electronics and in particular radio transmission and reception. I built my first radio receiver when I was 11 and have been a ham radio operator since the early 70's, building some of my own equipment, testing various homemade antennae and talking with other hams all over the world. I was at a party and had occasion to talk with a young civil engineer, freshly graduated. I've no doubt he was a qualified civil engineer but I quickly discovered that he did not even possess what I would have considered to be a layman's knowledge of electricity! Not only had his schooling never taught him something so basic as how an incandescent light bulb worked but he had never picked it up on his own as he grew up. No matter how many times I run into this I can't help but wonder if this is a major reason why Canada seems to be losing its competitive edge against countries like China. So yes, I admit to a bias against those formally educated today! Too often I find them elitist in their attitudes, being contemptuous of anyone without a degree and frankly, arrogant in believing that they know more than most folks on even those subjects outside of their own specialization. But that's just me! The world is what it is and an old guy like me is not going to change it. That being said, it doesn't preclude my being right in what I observe.

My good Dr. Dre, did you actually read AW's list? Some were escapes. Some were paroles. A couple were what appear to be rather short and light sentences. Also, you can use all the debating tactics you want to win this battle of an argument and it really won't matter. In fact, the more sophisticated your argument the more you will lose, in the real world of public opinion. Joe Canadian has become so overwhelmed by people talking over his head that he tends to simply reject all such talk as more "spin". You have made one good point in all this, as far as I can see. You pointed out that true life sentences would satisfy much of the objection to not having a death penalty. I have agreed with you all along on that point!

China can invest here all they want! While they are here though they have to obey OUR anti-pollution laws! Meanwhile, you pick at my model and ignore my point! What's more, when it comes to my country I cheerfully admit to being VERY partisan!

If I had a convicted murderer in my family and his guilt was obvious I would volunteer to throw the switch! If I went crazy and killed someone and the shrinks gave me back my sanity, when I realized what I had done the guilt would drive me to suicide!

This is hilarious, Derek! Some folks would rather appear to win an argument than arrive at truth! Everything you have posited is just common sense. Now, you are facing demands to come up with proof that a spy-type deal exists! Anybody with hair in their ears would know that there's no way such can be provided. Do they think there's a website listing covert agreements between the USA and Canada, with a list where item 10 says "We will use this method to get around the rules in each of our respective countries"? However, obviously they feel that if YOU can't provide such a cite for them then they have won the debate! Meanwhile, Eppur si muove!

I would say yes! Such documents have to be able to change with the times. I'm sure that the American Constitution had amendments over the decades because the values of the people had changed. Should the minority have been allowed to introduce an Amendment that implemented Prohibition? Should majority opinion not be allowed to get it repealed? Still, if the majority opinion does indeed change I believe the bar to accomplish an amendment should not be so high as to be all but impossible but at the same time it should be enough to ensure that an amendment would take time, with lots of debate and consideration. Finally, it should be put to a referendum of some sort, or at least an important campaign plank. I just can't believe that a bunch of politicians can create an infallible document supposedly based upon the consensus of the people, that has no need to ever change, for centuries without end! Look how much our values have changed over the span of 100 years, or even less.

Perhaps you'd like to cite China, Russia or India as models?

Yep! Since the Saudis are afraid of the competition for oil from Canada, why shouldn't they be allowed to fund lobby groups here to try to prevent it? Or perhaps China would like to further reduce our manufacturing competitive industries, by funding similar groups under the guise of anti-CO2 or other pollutants. This would be even more effective, considering that China puts ZERO environmental constraints on their OWN industry! Of course, I'm only being too cynical and suspicious! China or the Saudis would NEVER do such a thing! Certainly, the eco-warriors would ALWAYS deeply and seriously investigate where their money is coming from!

For about the zillionth time, I am not advocating a compulsory death sentence! Although it has been decades since the wrongful conviction of Steven Truscott and we have had the advent of modern DNA forensics I suppose it is possible for a wrongful conviction. Particularly if the "system" is feeling political pressure to come up with ANYONE to settle a case! I'm talking only in cases of beyond any reasonable doubt and of heinous value. Paul Bernardo would be one. That case out in BC were a serial killer murdered a number of women, mostly prostitutes and aboriginals and feed their bodies to his pigs to try to remove the bodies from discovery would be another. Perhaps Charles Ing as well. Yet again, If we had consecutive sentences and true life sentences it might bring down those numbers of Canadians who have lost faith in our justice system. I know I could accept such! While we're at it, maybe something in legislation to prevent any more "deals" such as that given to Karla Homolka. In her case, we've now allowed a psychopath to live freely in another country. I guess as long as she doesn't kill again in Canada our justice officials will have no reason to be embarrassed.

Yes, indeed it might! Thank you for pointing that out for me. As far as amendments, were there any of substance?

Who said that? Not me! Please don't put words in my mouth. I believe that amendments should always take some effort, to make sure that they are not frivolous. As far as our amending formula, I think in many areas the bar is set just too high! Especially in any area where you need Quebec's consent. Their culture and their needs tend to be so different from that of the rest of Canada that they are not likely to give it. Myself, I would like to see the right to property specifically spelled out in our Constitution or Charter of Rights. However, that's just me. I am well aware that the majority of Canadians couldn't care less and thus I have to accept that.

Sadly MB, only with rational people!

Well, first of all I don't think you're making a real world point. It is very unlikely that I would end up falsely convicted on death row. What's more, I don't believe that my fellow citizens would vote for a legal system that executes people for trivial offences! We are not Saudi Arabia, after all! Nor are we ever likely to become such. Nothing I have seen suggests that anyone is advocating capital punishment to be applied willy nilly. Or that we would go to a ridiculous extreme. Remember, laws come about through a political process. They may be refined and sadly, even ignored by judges but still, there has to be some political desire for a law in the first place. Our problem is that too often laws do not reflect the values of the majority. Sometimes, as in the case of our repressive drug laws, especially as regards marijuana, they are expressly contrary to the views of the majority of Canadian voters. Whatever, in an ideal system, before a law could be put to the people for approval we would expect it to have a great deal of debate and scrutiny. I have enough faith in my fellow citizens as a group that they would make a considered choice. The only possible alternative is to assume that the majority of citizens are far stupider than I am and should not be allowed to make their own choice. I refuse to do that!

Not at all! If a Constitution was accepted by the majority of people then to me its valid. By the same lights, any and all amendments would have to meet the same criteria. Unfortunately, our Constitution has a very poor provision for amendment, with parameters that in effect are impossible to achieve in the real world. It is cast in stone, the way it is, for better or worse. Of course, there are those who will immediately argue over the actual parameters to amendment but the fact remains in the real world they can never happen. So we don't have to worry about any amendments. That being said, I don't recall capital punishment or anything to do with legal sentences being in our Constitution. Perhaps I missed it. Could you be so good as to point it out?

Sez who? The victims?

Who decides that a minority view is right and should prevail? Who decides what is a valid expert opinion? I ask again. Who decides? You? Me? CharterofRights? Charles McVeety?

Watch for it, Cap! There will come a day when the Opposition critics are lambasting the Tories for the amount of money spent by EC in their investigations!

I'm willing to bet that Harper didn't even know about it! The PM never knows every blessed thing that's going on. The picture is just too big. That's why things are delegated to the rest of the team. Mind you, when it hits the fan the critics will state absolutely that the PM should have known! Contrary to belief in some quarters, we have never had Superman as our PM! The problem in this area seems to be that Harper's team has no Science champion! At least, not one that anyone has ever seen or heard! We need a Minister of Science and Technology, who has some real clout and is forthright about using it. If Harper has such a minister, it's obvious that his office is in some basement somewhere. As I've repeated myself many times, I've known few politicians of any stripe that seemed to understand anything scientific or technical more complicated than an office stapler. In today's world, that can be suicidal for the future of our country! Canada needs more than just RIM and the Space Arm to not just progress but survive as a strong society with a strong economy. Sadly, most conservatives seem to be even more unfit for the role. They are stodgy! The only one I ever heard of that had any understanding of a technical subject was Chuck Cadman, who used to repair electronic equipment. Sadly, we lost him. Today, Conservatives seem to have accounting as their background. Liberals are usually lawyers. The NDP seem to spring from teachers, auto union workers or just 2nd year college students. Heaven help us! No wonder the Chinese are cleaning our clocks!