Wild Bill

Aston Kutcher's new character on the old Charlie Sheen sitcom - 2 and 1/2 Men! The name is Walden Schmidt, a guy who made a billion when one of the Silicon Valley big guns bought up his dot. com company.

May we call you "Walden"? Or would that be too close to Demi Moore for your wife's sensibilities?

Because other forms of energy aren't completely invented yet, GH! They're still FAR more expensive! And you can't put technological breakthroughs on a fixed schedule. They could happen today, tomorrow, a hundred years from now or even be proven to be impossible! Throwing money at the problem can SOMETIMES speed things up! Sometimes it can't, because things just don't work that way.

I think that once again August you may be showing a biased perspective. I suspect that if we had the data we'd find that 9 out of 10 provinces have little or no problem with references to our monarch. The 1 out of 10 would be Quebec! If Harper yielded to Quebec's feelings on the matter it would look to TROC that once again we are not a Confederation of 10 but rather a country of only 2 - English and French! That Quebec would have more status than at least 5 of the other provinces put together. You see, Quebec is the ONLY province that thinks of Canada as 50/50, English and French! Harper has to take that into account. Moreso, Quebec has decided, for whatever reasons, to not back the ruling party in Ottawa. They did for years with the Liberals and with Mulroney but not any longer. Harper has just proven that he doesn't need Quebec to have a majority. This means that Quebec has perhaps the least amount of influence on the ruling party that it has had in generations! It couldn't have made itself less of a player in Ottawa than by refusing to give much of any Tory seats and backing almost exclusively those of the Opposition. Worse yet, they've backed the NDP, which is the most unlikely to ever become the ruling party! So tell me, August, why should Harper even bother worrying about how Quebec feels about federal references to the monarchy? What could he hope to gain? He's making his base happy. Doing otherwise won't likely get him even one more seat in Quebec anyway!

I never said I excused the Saudis. YOU implied that I did and then called me down for it! For the record, I have contempt for their human rights record as well. That's why I champion the idea of ethical oil. If it were up to me we'd never give any Islamic fundamentalist oppressive state another dime for oil! Up till now we haven't had much choice but now with the oilsands we do. Not only should we take it but so should countries like the USA!

Thanks, Bonam! You gave us back the dream of a Federation of Planets! I didn't realize that the vector differences were mostly that trivial. And if we do achieve FTL, clocks might get out of sync on Rigel IV compared to ours here on Earth but it sounds like this would be a simple resetting, like adjusting for time zones when we take a jet vacation. So we'll have to be careful! If one were to get an Orion slave girl pregnant the rate of time would be congruent enough that we would still be around when the baby was delivered! Relativistic time effects would not be as effective as a bus ticket out of town!

In the early 70's I was a soundman/roadie for a touring rock and roll band. Not a famous one, just a cover band but we were on the road in Ontario for months at a time. Occasionally we strayed over into Hull and once into Montreal. One thing I noticed was that "progressive rock" like Yes and Genesis (that was before they let that drummer sing and went all disco!) was far more popular in Quebec amongst the francophones than it was in Ontario. In Barrie the crowd would even boo and yell out for more "LEDDD ZZZEPPELIN!!!". In Quebec we played "Watcher of the Skies" and the crowd would catch all our mistakes!

Bonam, it's pretty obvious by the deafening silence that the western Left couldn't give a damn about women being lashed in Iran, or any other Islamic fundamentalist country. Or gays being murdered either. They will take any sin of Uncle Sam, even if trivial in comparison, and treat it as a crime against the universe. Hell, even retaliating too strongly against some lesbian hecklers at a comedy club can cost you tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars defending yourself in a kangaroo Human Rights Council Star Chamber. Yet countries like Iran are never challenged. The most you can get from the Left is that it's all somehow the fault of the Jews! That's part of why the Left long ago lost my respect. They act like they alone care about disadvantaged people. The Right are accused of eating babies for breakfast, to hear them say it! Meanwhile they demand their government help the poor with taxes taken from all their fellow citizens while walking by the Sally Ann buckets and putting nothing in themselves. It's simple hypocrisy, by definition.

Yeah, that's it! Iran is really a nice guy, honest! It's all a fabrication! Just ask those women who got lashed! That wasn't real pain! It was just a fabrication! It's all lies! Iran is like...Owen Sound! The prettiest little country you could imagine! Those stories about Iran wanting to nuke Israel are all US lies! As Bullwinkle J Moose used to say "It's all just a figamentation of your imagination!"

I think where some, including Pliny, have gone wrong is that they have misunderstood what Einstein actually said in the first place! For the record, he said that the speed of light is a constant, to all observers in all frames of reference. A frame of reference is the environment of the observer. It can be a train traveling at 100 miles per hour with respect to an observer on the ground beside the track. It can be a rocket traveling at 90% of the speed of light, with respect to an observer on its home planet. All frames of reference are arbitrary and all must measure their velocity as relative to each other. If we launch a rocket from earth at 90% of the speed of light, if we measure the speed of light on earth and IN THE ROCKET observers both on earth and in the rocket will get exactly the same figure! If you stop and think about it, at first glance this seems odd, especially for the rocket. If it is already going 90% of the speed of light, how could a passenger get the same velocity figure? There's only one way this could be true - time must travel at a different rate within the rocket, WITH RESPECT TO EARTH! Within the rocket, time would appear to pass normally. The speed of light would measure the same as it does anywhere else. On earth, if it were possible to see inside the rocket, things would seem to be moving MUCH slower than here on earth! If the rocket returned to earth, it would have to match speeds with the earth before it could land. At that point, it would have returned to the earth's frame of reference. Any passengers would have had no sense of time having passed much more slowly but when they compared clocks with people who had stayed on earth they would then see a time discrepancy. Weeks may have passed on the rocket but on earth it could be centuries. The popular example of this is shown in sci-fi movies about characters on a ship being trapped in a black hole. While they are trapped time for them appears to be traveling normally. They have no way to tell there is any difference. For them, there IS NO difference! However, if due to some plot twist they escape the black hole's influence when they emerge back into the universe again centuries, if not eons, may have passed! I particularly enjoyed one episode of the show Stargate which portrayed this phenomenon quite accurately. The episode opens with a team having passed through a Stargate to find themselves on a planet about to be swallowed by a black hole. Black holes have such immense gravity that they can actually trap light itself and prevent it from escaping from its gravity. Objects within what scientists call the "event horizon" not only are trapped forever, at least as long as the universe is around, but the men in the episode would never experience the millions of years passing! To them, time would continue to pass at the same rate it always had. If they had a way of measuring the speed of light they would get the same old result they would get anywhere else, but to an observer outside the event horizon and thus the influence of the black hole's gravity, the men would look as if they were frozen, like flies in amber. Hopefully, I haven't added to the muddiness of the waters! Just as an afterthought, this aspect of the laws of the Universe means that we could never see a Star Trek Fedeeration of Planets. At least, not one that operated in a common time frame. Every star has its own vector and velocity, shooting off at vastly different speeds in any and all directions from each other. This means that there is no common time frame! Time on Vulcan would likely not travel anywhere near the same speed as it does on Earth, or on Orion or any other star, for that matter. How could a Federation function? Call a meeting for a year from now and everyone shows up on a completely different date, yet all swear that their clock show'd a year had passed while on their home planet. The discrepancies would range from minutes to centuries, all depending on their home planet's speed and direction compared to an observer on Earth.

"Does it ever see Quebec in a good light?" As people, sure! Politically, not really! As I said, most Canadians in other provinces simply never think about Quebec at all. How often does the average Quebecois wake up thinking about the rest of Canada? As I believe I said earlier, much of what TROC believes is not really true but that's the perception and in politics perception is reality. Most non-francophones really don't understand Quebec's wish to preserve its culture and language. In these modern times frankly it seems an old-fashioned, primitive notion. We have the Internet and we have language translation programs that keep improving all the time. We share huge amounts of common movies and music. It was 10 years ago that I reported to that Pointe Claire office but ALL of my francophone workmates were quite familiar with Seinfield, Friends and Star Trek, especially Voyager where a good friend of mine from Ste. Therese referred to the "Seven of Nine" character as "Two of Huge"! We all have heritage cultural aspects. Your ancestors wrote provencal poetry. Mine painted their arses blue and ran naked into medieval British battles! Others did origami. The Schmengies from SCTV ate copious quantities of cabbage rolls, drank barrels of coffee and every Christmas the men all exchanged socks! The difference is, those of us outside Quebec don't feel the need for any laws to protect culture or any threat by having traces of many cultures in our community. Whatever, the world will go the way it will and you and I have little or no influence on it. As long as I can still get the occasional Bras D'or biere I'm not all that worried about the outcome.

Well, it might help a few ambassadors sleep at night. And it may prevent a few nukes from destroying Israel. But really, I guess you're right. Why should we support our best allies? Of course, they'll still always be there for us, right? And even if they're not, so what? Canada would never need allies anyway, right? There would be no negative effects on our trade relationships, I'm sure. Any jobs we lose for not supporting the US would be easily made up by improving trade with European countries like say, Greece! We just have to advance them some credit! Yeah, that's it! That's the ticket! Bring all our troops home! Screw our allies! Things will be fine! Really! We will have Peace in our time! Fer sure! A chicken in every pot! Two cars in every garage! Really! Just trust me!

Really? I always thought that like many British-style democracies we had no formal Constitution! Instead, we had Law based on precedent, over years and years and years. From what this old guy remembers, part of how Trudeau's Liberals sold us on having a written Constitution and Charter of Rights was by making the claim that we never had them before, implying that somehow this left us vulnerable and defenceless. Some folks warned us that by writing them down (described as "French" style Law instead of "British") we actually were hurting ourselves! The metaphor used was a "Keep Off the Grass" sign. With a British style basis it was assumed that a citizen could walk on whatever grass he wished. Only if there was some good reason would and could a "Keep Off" sign be posted. When the Constitution and Rights were formally written down, they really defined only what rights we DID have, as opposed to assuming we had any and all rights, proscribing only specifics when necessary. IOW, we have to keep off grass with no signs! If we had a right to walk on it there would be a sign saying so! A good student of Law would of course frame it better than I did but again from memory, that was the gist of the arguments at that time. One definite fact is that Canada became less like Britain, who has never felt the need to have such formal documents, and more like France or even the Americans!

Eat dirt? Not true! The Pequistes could always find a redneck or two to make it seem so to the media. I think they kept them in the basement of the PQ headquarters, like the old commercial for the Gulf Oil repairman. Most of TROC never thinks much about Quebec at all! If you insist on turning the conversation to Quebec and its place in Canada, most Canadians outside of Quebec think it's a lovely province but its people have been enjoying a better deal than their own province. Electricity is thought to be much cheaper, along with auto insurance and most of all - beer! The perception is that Quebec always uses the threat of separation to soak more money out of Ottawa. This might not be exactly true but nonetheless, a LOT of TROC Canadians believe it! TROC has bent over backwards in the interests of bilingualism, making a minimum amount of French compulsory in schools, at least one French language TV channel in every major city and a fortune has been spent on labeling products in both languages. Consumers are reminded of this whenever they buy groceries. It seems the cans always show French to the outside, causing little old ladies to have to constantly pull a can out and turn it around to see what they are buying. As I said, for the most part Canadians in TROC rarely think about Quebec but one thing does stand out - bilingual road signs! Drive from Toronto to Montreal and you leave a city with bilingual signs all over every highway and many city streets. Cross the border into Quebec and it's French only. Few have even heard the argument that Quebec is linquistically "special" and merely trying to protect and preserve its culture. All they know is that they have gone to much expense and effort on behalf of a relatively small number of francophones only to get zero return consideration in Quebec! Not every TROC Canadian may have thought this out completely but one thing that Quebecers do without realizing it deeply insults all other Canadians, namely thinking of Canada as a 50/50 deal between English and French Canada. People in each province feel as much loyalty towards their area as Quebecers do to theirs! Someone in Ontario doesn't think of himself as part of "Anglo Canada". He thinks of his province on its own and then Canada as a whole. He feels any kinship with another province like Quebec or PEI through Canada as a nation, not as some Anglo race. So to TROC, Canada is a Confederation of 10 equal provinces, NOT half English and half French! Get that typical TROC Canadian talking after a few beers and something else rather unpleasant may emerge. What Quebecers feel as "tribalism" or unity looks to many in TROC as racism! Not as to colour but as to culture or ancestry. The concept of "pur laine" didn't help this attitude either. Just my own observations but I had thought that your POV was a bit extreme and thought I'd try to give you some better data to consider, not to upset you but simply to tell it as I truly see it. I worked for some years with an office in Pointe Claire and got to see much of both sides of the equation. I think many Quebecois just don't realize that they are as ignorant of the views of their TROC fellow Canadians as those TROC Canadians are of them! Sometimes I suspect that our politicians like to keep it that way...

Derek, you posed questions with specifics and got general and rather emotional answers. If that brother in law is real, it's obvious you better not hold your breath for an answer with any depth to it at all.

If it is obvious that Iran is responsible for the Gulf being closed to shipping would that not effectively put Iran at war with ALL countries shipping through the Gulf? Including all the other OPEC members? Would we expect that instead of blaming Iran they would say "Sure you kicked us in the gonads Iran but hey! We can see that it was OBAMA who MADE you do it! So we'll support you against the evil USA!" Sounds like a bit of a stretch to me...

Geez, could you go for a bigger stretch? You argue like Jehovah Witness, trying to get me to buy into what's in their magazines! I'm done with you! Another for 'ignore'. You just don't offer anything of SUBSTANCE in a debate! At least as far as my own POV, and that's all I care about. You don't have to listen to me and I don't have to waste my time with you. That's freedom!

When was the last time the USA sentenced a woman to 100 lashes, killed some gays...

I won't shed any tears for Iran! They'll do just fine. They can go lash some women, kill some gays, behead some Israelis and then go get a good night's rest, to rise up refreshed the next morning!

Exactly, TB! I truly don't understand why some make it into such a big deal! Christ, we have children hungry and some want to rail against having a Queen, who in all but the most nitpicking of fashions is just a figurehead and a heritage symbol anyway.

Once again, in your rush to give a snide rebuttal you ignored my main point. (Geez, you can be an awfully ignorant SOB to talk to at times!) What percentage of Canadians in 1950 and before were of British heritage? And are you ignorant of NORTHERN Ireland? The context of my post was that only since relatively recent times have we diluted our previous mainstream heritage. Now we see those of the old mainstream being slapped in the face for their hospitality. You let some into the neighbourhood...

I'm curious as to the ethnic descent of some of the more vocal anti-monarchy posters in this thread. My ancestors came from Scotland to land at Pictou, Nova Scotia in 1773. That's 238 years ago! Along the way came many Irish and English. The British part of my ancestry is strong and until after the second world war was the mainstream for English Canada. We had other nationalities contribute, of course, but still, we were of British stock and proud of it! But it should not be forgotten, our first loyalty was for Canada! When we had sent soldiers, sailors and pilots to help out the Mother country, many British officers had to be forcefully reminded of the fact that we were NOT British colonists! Canada is a Dominion, a realm that through history and ancestry shares a Monarch with Britain but that's all. Britain does not rule us and even our shared monarch only rules as a constitutional rather than an absolute monarch. We have always welcomed immigrants, especially for the last 60 years or so. However, it seems only in the last 30 or more have we been hearing all this talk about jettisoning our monarch to become some sort of republic. Have those who champion this idea have any notion of how this can sound to a Canadian of many generations? We welcomed people in who promptly want to change the decor of the entire house! If there had been a poll taken in 1950 that welcoming immigrants would have lead to this result, what do you think the results would have said? Personally, I am proud of my British heritage (perhaps a bit more for the Irish and Scot! ) and loyal to my Queen. Those that want to change it can piss off!

If that's true, then how did Ford win his election? SOMEBODY must have liked him!

It's not a $140 million surplus! It's a $140 million dollar gouge off the backs of every taxpaying Toronto citizen! If it's surplus then give it all BACK, I say! And let folks keep their money and spend it on themselves and their families forevermore.

Going to cable I can understand but I'll be disappointed if they stop their OTA transmission. I gave up cable and satellite in favour of my own OTA system. I just finally got pissed off with having to buy a package with 10 boring specialty channels like "The Shopping Channel" and "The Watching Paint Dry" channel just to get ONE channel like Space or History! Screw 'em and the horses they rode in on! Hopefully they will maintain the OTA. If they already had an investment in transmitters it doesn't make much sense to scrap them after only a year or so. Those things ain't cheap! 'Specially with the antennae and the land to go with them.