Wild Bill

I dunno, Saipan! I've always lived with Sheila in my neighbourhood and I cheerfully admit that I've never had any use for her type of politics. That being said, I've met her upon occasion and I can't help but like her as a person! She's a ferocious fighter but she's not always very good at understanding if she's backing the right cause to fight for! Sorta like Jack Layton. Many of us consider the NDP political philosophy to be downright loopy but few can deny that Jack was a nice guy who could get along with anybody. It's strange that Jack would never have demanded that you agree with his politics before you could have his friendship or respect when so many in his party do so every day, at every opportunity if someone doesn't drink their Kool-Aid. All that is moot, anyway. She was extremely popular among a large segment of the Liberal membership and electorate. Now she is running for Party President, which is a position where she won't be standing for election but will have a great deal of influence in trying to straighten the Liberal Party out of its problems. Who cares if WE like her! We don't vote Liberal anyway! At least, not the past while. I could imagine a time when I might again vote Liberal! Not if I see another Ignatieff and Dion, however. The question is, could Sheila be successful in making the Liberals a viable, electable party again? She has always been a tenacious fighter, as I said. I wouldn't make the mistake of not taking her seriously.

Simple! The Japanese airport management and the politicians involved are simply more intelligent than ours! What else is new?

My time is as valuable as yours. Why don't you simply answer two easy questions? First, obviously those students who kept math among their subjects would be more likely to do well. What percentage of our students takes maths and hard sciences all through El-Hi, compared to those countries that score ahead of us? Are we testing only 10% because that's all that chose to keep taking the subjects? ALL students take easier subjects like English and History! Not that many take maths and hard sciences. That's my main point! Tell me how well we do in maths and sciences among the same student percentages as those countries that beat us! Did China beat us testing 90% of its students while we only tested that 10% I suggested? Second, are those countries that beat us out the same countries that are cleaning our clocks economically? Actually, I have a third question. Does it show any rankings from a decade or two ago? What's the slope of the graph? Are we getting better or out-competed? If I know those points then it might be worth my while to spend the time reading your link. If I don't, then I don't see how it would provide the context to make it actually useful and not just propaganda.

Again, I'm the "techie" guy. Don't just throw a bunch of rules at me and expect me to believe that they all make sense and they all are effective, especially when I can see with my own eyes that many are NOT! Some even appear to be just smoke and mirrors, to make us think that a lot of activity and aggravation is the same as effective action. Plus we have media reports about how baggage loaders are totally unscreened for security at some airports, including some here in Canada. The RCMP have actually arrested a few! There are reports of reporters deliberately carrying dummy items to see if security will catch them. Usually they don't! So don't give me the holy attitude, fellowtraveller! It's always cheaper to LOOK safe than to BE safe! I mean, nail clippers! Explain those to me, will you? I haven't even mentioned veils and burkhas and certain ethnic groups apparently exempt from the same searches as the rest of us, even those groups who have represented virtually all of the latest rounds of terrorism. Someone immediately will totally dismiss the reality of those factors and dismiss it all as simple racism. No, sorry. I don't feel all that safer at all! I'm a "Utilitarian". If it doesn't actually work then it's just "feel good" crap!

Perhaps I have been excessive. It comes from frustration Michael but I admit that's no excuse. It's not that I don't respect people, it's that I don't respect their opinions in areas that they obviously can't understand! People have opinions on all sorts of things. Don't bother asking me to give a useful opinion on anything to do with art. I can't draw a stick man without a ruler. I can't match my shirt colour to that of my tie. Neither am I that good with people skills. I'm not so good at inspirational speeches. I am poor sometimes at following the wishes of the team if I am unconvinced they are going in the right direction. But ask me about something that needs details addressed, like HOW a system can work, particularly with things like electricity or technology and because I took maths and sciences I believe I can offer a much more valuable opinion than that of the average man on the street. They are totally different skill sets! We have become so egalitarian that we believe that just because everyone has the right to vote on something they also have an opinion that should be considered and respected. In many areas, this idea is totally bonkers! If you have no idea how to even repair a plug on a broken lamp, or even how a light bulb works, you really CAN"T understand enough of the underlying concepts to properly evaluate a McGuinty MicroFit program! So the majority, because of its education, or rather lack of it in certain areas, feels it has the right to make decisions simply on the basis of consensus. Yet things like techology, such as the cost-effectiveness of different ways of generating or distributing it, don't care about a large consensus of ill-informed people. They work or they don't. Our job is to understand Nature's Laws, not formulate them!

That was never the point, Michael. The real perps are the school boards, who do a poor job with science and not much better with math. Then, when they have poor outcomes, they give themselves an alibi by declaring that many students find those subjects too hard and allow them to drop them very early, even in some areas as low as Grade 6! They then present Arts subjects as equivalents. The problem is that science/math and Arts are NOT equivalents, Michael! They are also not necessarily that hard. They DO tend to require better teaching! That's a whole thread in itself. The consequence is that students are short changed in subjects that help develop critical thinking. Probably the fact that maths and sciences tend to take more time to mark might have something to do with it as well. A grader has to read the replies (likely essay form!) to follow the student's thinking, in order to note what points he understands or what method he used to solve an equation. There's a lack of balance, Michael! A severe one! Here in Hamilton an elementary teacher for maths or sciences can literally write their own ticket. They are scarce as hen's teeth! I doubt if it's any different anywhere else. That sort of imbalance cannot help but result in a lower capability in those subjects in our students. Students should not be allowed to drop maths at all in High School, or heavy sciences like physics and chemistry. Except perhaps in only a few exceptional circumstances. Students and teachers have been given an extremely easy out and not surprisingly, most of them take it. Without such critical thinking skills students are woefully ill-equipped to thrive after graduation. This includes making informed political choices. Certainly it can explain paying 80 cents per kw/hr for solar electricity under McGuinty's MicroFit program while paying New York to take our excess power!

Yep! It's been building for a while now. Another emigre from "rubble.com". "Hit the road, Jack! And dontcha come back no more, no more!"

Indeed! It's amazing how many people hold to the "fixed pie" illusion, that there is only so much wealth and only the resources we know about today. At any point in Man's History that claim could and has been made, usually as a justification for wresting wealth from someone else. I watched a documentary a few days ago about the wars between England and the Dutch in the 1600's, largely begun because England believed that the Dutch had more than their share of the New World trade and therefore England had no choice but to take it from them. They had no concept of what trade with the New World would become as it just grew and grew and grew! The resources in Space are virtually infinite, both for energy and for materials. Looks like the Chinese have realized that. Meanwhile Obama is still orating about Mom, Apple Pie and the America he'd LIKE to see, with never one world about HOW he would achieve it! I listened to his speech the other day and I was just amazed that anyone could listen to that malarkey! Not a single blessed real idea of how to make things better, just a long list of high-falutin' wishes! If I'm still here when they come along, I'm going to encourage my kids to learn Mandarin.

Looks to me more like the pointy ends of some management heads!

Good try Rue but I'm afraid you're battling faith, not reason. You made your point with crystal clear reason. Most readers in this thread will totally miss your points! Oh well!

You've yet to answer the question of how does Israel dare to make peace when repeatedly Palestinian terrorists have broken agreements and just started lobbing rockets again? That is just plain stupid! If Israel gives up security, it's obvious what will happen. Some Hamas type group will just seize the opportunity to commit a bigger act of violence. Look what happened when Israel gave back occupied land. The terrorists just moved their launchers closer! Even countries like Egypt claim they will police Palestinian areas but in practice its just talk. Their police seem to just go in, walk around and ignore anything they see. Unilateral disarmament is just a fancy name for suicide. What guarantees would Israel get that would WORK?

This is a good point, Argus! These protesters seem to take their right to disrupt to be absolute. If an audience has paid for their tickets, do they not have a right to the performance? In effect, the protesters are just taking a cheap way to hijack the drawing power of SOMEONE ELSE, since by themselves few would pay the price of a coffee to listen to their protest views. So why should audiences put up with it? Why just sit there? Why not march up and give THE PROTESTERS a hard time? These protesters have been used to a free ride. They take it for granted that the authorities are bound by the rules and can't do them any serious harm. Where is it written that we in an audience have to do the same? I guess we Canadians are just too damn "whipped" to give these protesters back some of their own. Like the old joke of how do you get 50 Canadians to leave your swimming pool? Just say nicely "Canadians! Would you please leave the pool?"

I agree, Michael. I'm glad they pay more attention at airports but the WAY they pay attention frankly seems lowbrow and "mickey mouse", like something organized by a high school student committee. Actually, the high schoolers likely would have done a better job! At least, no one will slit my throat with a toenail clipper! When reading about what articles they have banned on airplanes I always think about that old Monty Python skit, where the drill instructor trains the men in "What to do if you're attacked by a man with a strawberry!" Now the Israelis, they have REAL security! Instead of minimum wage graduates of some quickie community college course with not even a can of Mace, they have university graduates employed by government security firms, well paid, highly intelligent and armed with Uzis! Instead of large numbers of cheap, poorly trained security workers Israel uses far fewer but MUCH more well trained and intelligent agents! Instead of a "rote list" of procedures to follow Israel relies on the good sense of their agents, so that they can indentify REAL threats and leave most innocent passengers alone and free of aggravation. Being a techie, hearing "rah rah" talk from some politico doesn't make me feel safer until I see the details of HOW that "rah rah" talk is supposed to work!

:lol: ROTFLMAO! ZING! Dead on the mark! Hell, most of them were lucky to get a decent math mark in GRADE school and only passed science because at that level its all about sprouting bean seeds in jars of tissue paper!

Here's the link: http://www.geekologie.com/2011/08/china-lets-trap-an-asteroid-in-earths-or.php "China is considering temporarily capturing an asteroid in earth's orbit and then mining it for all it's valuable metals." "There's speculation that mining an asteroid a mile-wide could be worth something to the tune of 25-trillion dollars." This article is about China beginning a plan to mine asteroids for their valuables. I posted about this some time ago and most replies blew the idea off as some sort of Buck Rogers stuff, even though the idea is decades old in both the popular and professional scientific community. Sadly, I've become convinced these past 10-15 years that the West has lost its drive to develop space capabilities and that Space belonged to other countries, like China or even India. Articles like this would seem to confirm it, especially after Obama appears to have deliberately taken America out of the playing field. $25 TRILLION DOLLARS! With that kind of money from just ONE asteroid China will not only hold America's entire debt, it will be able to pave the entire country over for "brownfield re-development"! Running out of resources indeed! What ignorance! Just pull your eyes away from your shoes and look UP once in a while!

"I agree that if we eliminated the minimum wage, some manufacturing jobs would come back. This is also known as 'the race to the bottom'. " Not at all! You are either above or on the bottom. I took your words to mean that if removing the minimum wage would bring jobs back then that would be a move off the bottom, so we must be on the bottom now! As opposed to being bottom feeders, which of course is something entirely different! Likely, it would involve being elected!

You know Waldo, eventually your people skills are going to result in your having no audience at all. You're going to need a gun to get people to play with you!

Well, he may have been a non-combatant at that point but what was he doing 5 minutes before? And isn't this apples and oranges compared to randomly firing rockets into residential areas and blowing up busloads of schoolkids and civilians?

Hogging water, for one! It's true that Israel developed all those desalinization plants, both with the brain work and the money needed. So in a strict capitalist way they have a right to deny it to surrounding Arab countries and Palestinian communities. However, I think this is very short sighted. They should supply as much as possible, at as cheap a cost as possible, especially for agriculture! If your enemy depends on you for drinking and growing his food he's more likely to mellow out somewhat.

Yes and no, Michael. If the jobs are gone, are we not already at the bottom? Isn't having some come back a step back up the ladder?

"Yammerheads" ... would be anybody who exercises freedom of speech?" Not at all! It's not a yammerhead speaking that makes him a yammerhead. It's what he says! A yammerhead is someone who if your city is dying as businesses keep closing and/or moving, will insist the agenda be switched to the discussion of bike lanes! Or a union negotiator who brags about the contract he won, while six months later the plant closes down. Or like a local politician here in my town of Hamilton, Ontario who, while acknowledging that our business and residential taxes are the highest in the province thus driving new business away, our roads and streets are a minefield of cracks and potholes and our city core looks like downtown Detroit, prides himself on initiating a "flowers on every street median" program! Or, again using the Arab/Israeli conflict as an example, a yammerhead is someone who expects Israel to just smile and do nothing while rockets rain down on them! I don't agree with everything Israel does either but that idea is just whacked! In the book I mentioned, the lead character normally couldn't care less about yammerheads but once caught up in a political movement finds himself forced to listen to yammerheads who all have unworkable ideas that they expect SOMEONE ELSE (mainly him!) to implement!

Talk about politically correct! What a hoot! Especially some of those dancers! Guys dancing around a factory in their underwear? It's like Rocky from Rocky Horror!

Sadly, they'll get away with it! There goes my Christmas money for my kids.

I'm still not sure if he's simply throwing out bribes in all directions, desperately trying to get some support, or if he's dumb enough to believe his own BS! Maybe it's both! A dumb Dalton insisting on running his own ship and a bunch of his more intelligent crew frantically trying to keep the ship afloat...

Basically, you said "Why don't you go back to where you came from, then?" I don't think anyone of us has the right to ask that of someone who has put his life on the line for our country. What have YOU done that's comparable? I could never be so arrogant as to make a comment like yours.