August1991

The problem with that argument, eureka, is that all governments together currently take on average about 50% of our income. Half of the 50% is used to buy goods/services on our behalf and the other half is shuffled to other people - often back to ourselves.How much more money can the government take? Could the government redirect money to social programs? From where? (We spend almost nothing on the military.)

What about Margaret Thatcher? What about Pierre Trudeau?---- Judy Lamarsh may have a hard time of it in the 1960s but I think frankly, if any good woman candidate came forward now, she would be reasonably well-received. Gender alone is not an issue. For heaven's sakes, two women were just named to the Supreme Court and I heard nary a comment on their clothing styles. The more fundamental question, in my view, is why more men choose the occupation of politics than women. Well, more women choose to be real estate agents. But more men choose to be police officers. More women choose to go to university than men. But more men choose to be car mechanics. BD will argue that these are examples of "systemic sexism" or some such. I'll have nothing of it. Kids today are free to choose. The limits are not imposed by gender. Girls and boys are different. Their differences are starting to be recognized. The CBC aired a fascinating NFB documentary It's a Girl's World which deserves a look. RB, your long ramble is filled with pseudo-theory; that is, there are ad hoc explanations for observed facts. For example: Pick up any sociology textbook from the 1950s and have a good giggle.Kimmy, your defense of Stronach is touching. But the fact is she was a light weight. [i saw her in the debate here in Montreal and it was almost pathetic.] How did the press treat Peter Pocklington when he ran? How would they have treated Pocklington's 35 year old son if he had run?

MS, I agree. J'aime bien les bibliothécaires.MS, my genetic origins are Quebec and Newfoundland, but I appreciate your heartful posts. Let's disagree, politely. (I'm "Canadian" because I can't be anything else...I prefer math as a language...)

Censorship in music? You want a signal. Censorship makes the signal more accurate. A signal to your parents, and to your cohorts. "I took the risk and listened to the music!"

I strongly disagree BBM. 'Government' is a wonderful way to do good.' How? That's the question!And, admit it, there are degrees to government waste and corruption. MS, I was born and raised in Canada but I have lived in different countries. I am struck how honest Canadians are. Abroad, foreigners have said the same to me - "Canadians are honest". It is my basic answer to the Mark Steyns of the world. Canada fosters honesty. We enjoy our reputation, and so does Mark Steyn, apparently. It happened. It won't happen again because PM PM now has a car and driver at our expense. Is that a good use of our money?

In such species, what is "female" and what is "male"? The individual, in general, contributes somehow to the future. I care little whether it is learned or not. It is. That's enough for me.50/50 split explains it well. After terrorist destruction, you (a male I assume), Bill Clinton and three guys (randomly chosen from your place of work) survive on an island. Brittany Spears, your wife/sister/female cousin and three chicks (randomly chosen from your place of work) also survive. What happens? The idea confused me too.1. Your life is at stake. You have two months to live. You have only three drugs available that cannot be taken simultaneously and require one month treatment. What do you do? (Get on the Internet and Google the drug names...) 2. Your life is at stake. You have two months to live. You have 500 drugs available that can be taken simultaneously and may save you. What do you do? It IS a choice, as Bush should have said in that debate. America means free choice. But who cares why anyone chooses what they choose. TalkNumb, once again, you say what is true. The issue is whether we strike a taboo and make it easier for individuals to choose.IMV, Stephen Harper should say openly that he has no objection if two men marry in a municipal office somewhere - Canada is a big country, surely a municipal office somewhere will do the deed. Not all municipal offices, nor even any church, synagogue, temple, mosque need do the deed. By saying this, Harper would make it plain that he is in favour of free choice. He would make the lives of some ordinary people better (with little /no cost to the rest of us). And Harper would send a message to the idiots on our planet of 6 billion that he chooses Galileo, Newton and Copernicus. For heaven's sakes, what are we defending? BD, I am willing to discuss this issue as long as it is clear that I have no objection to two people kissing in public, as long as their Garry Marshall moment is truly romantic. Call me ultimately naive, but I have no secret agenda other than honesty. Big Dookie 6, are we talking 6 cm or 6 inches?

Link providing quote source please.IMV, the Nobel Committee makes weird choices sometimes. It's their right. They seem now to be on a continent kick with the Peace and Literature Prizes. They may even be doing it in alphabetical order. Africa, Asia, North America, South America... I'll bet an Asian man gets in next year.

While you support the NDP MS, you in effect take the Liberal viewpoint.In the Liberal view, people such as Rene Levesque, Lucien Bouchard and Stephen Harper are the devil incarnate. Any means are perfectly legitimate to stop these opponents. There is something profoundly anti-democratic about the Liberal viewpoint. I don't think it's healthy for the country. I'll go out onto a limb and say that PM PM seems to understand this.

The truly criminal thing here is that these ad firms kicked back money to the Liberal Party.In addition, those ad firms provided free services to the Liberal Party in the last election. Lastly, people in the Liberal Party see nothing wrong with this. They see the Liberal Party as the only institution capable of managing Canada. In their mind, this is a question of "national unity" or Canada's version of "national security".

I frequently see dogs with a muzzle around their mouth. Sometimes the muzzle is a plastic affair akin to a mini-goalie mask and sometimes it is merely a nylon band around the jaw. I suspect that liability insurance may be the cause of the owner putting this on the dog. For the uninsurable, would a regulation requiring a muzzle for dogs in public places not solve this problem? ----- Incidentally, Ontario's proposal is an example of bad policy. For example, I note that current owners would be exempt. (How to verify that?) What about breeding kennels? Can they sell their current stock? Future pups? What happens if someone moves to Ontario in the future? What happens if a tourist crosses the Manitoba/Ontario border? Canada increasingly has regulations that fewer people respect.

This link works. I'll be honest and admit that I rarely watch TV. If someone said "O'Reilly" to me, I would think first of a pub. The Smoking Gun however is a great web site. Lotsa fun, as this affidavit shows. (Check out the mug shot section.) One word of caution: the affidavit is no doubt legit but it's just an affidavit. People can declare anything they want in an affidavit (and frequently do).

The Europeans have the Schengen visa. Foreigners enter Europe on a single visa that allows travel to different European countries. IOW, Germany issues visas to foreigners allowing them entry to France. For the French to allow Germans to decide what foreigners enter France is a tremendous step forward. It is a sign of sophistication. I think it is time for Canadians to show a similar maturity. A Canadian visa issued to foreigners should allow entry to the US and a US visa alone allow entry to Canada. This is now being discussed. Perhaps, in the future, the border between Canada and the US will be no more intrusive than the border between France and Germany now. Let us create a common North American visa as the Europeans have done. It would make the lives of foreigners easier.

Eureka, if you won't accept Hugo's data. Then surely, you would accept birth rate data.The world's population began to grow exponentially around 1800. If I'm not mistaken, Malthus wrote in the 1820s. Would you agree that an increasing population is evidence that ordinary people are better off? Good point. God knows how we got from the Patriot Act to a rapidly increasing human population for the first time in history.

Here's my theory, for what it's worth.Alpha males dominate leaving other males without female partners. This poses several questions: 1. Why are there Alpha males? 2. Why do males without females become homosexual? 3. Why are there lesbians? ---- The first question strikes me as the most interesting (and also gets back to the thread's title - animal marriage). Birds are largely monogamous. Mammals are not. (Beavers are an exception - but beavers are weird.) It is a common idea that men want to spread their plentiful seed whereas women want to husband their rare eggs. More accurately, one woman can transmit her genes to about 20 children, at most. One man, conceivably, could transmit his genes to several thousand children or more. BTW, female fish and female insects lay thousands of eggs. Most female birds require the critical participation of the male during the incubation of the egg.

Bored, I express an interest.I view it this way: I buy a TV from Shop X which says that for the next 5 years, if the TV breaks, Shop X will replace it. In 3 years, the TV "breaks" (according to me but not according to Shop X). The obvious answer here is that Shop X and I have previously agreed on Judge Z to decide our differing opinions of "broken". You are thinking about buying a TV from Shop X and you hear my story of the broken TV and the claims of Shop X that the TV was not broken. Does your trust in Judge Z help you in your decision to buy a TV at Shop X? IMV, this is the issue of marriage in a particular church.

BBM, I can't help myself. It's literly true.

This was my fear, BD. You in fact have an agenda. You want to mould children and create somehow a new human being. You believe in the "perfectibility" of people by design.My only possible answer to your "agenda" is to quote Boris Pasternak (translated) in Doctor Zhivago. The quote deserves reflection. Its context in the novel is heart-breaking.

Uh.... Jack Layton?

No, you are wrong BD. Gender does apparently have something to do with learning.An average refers to precisely that: an average. Variance is something else again. I have no idea what is being measured in the case of learning. So I'll stay with something more familiar: height. On average, women are shorter than men. The variance of heights means that some women are taller than some men. This is exactly what you say: Gender affects the way people learn, and affects their height. This viewpoint is common on the American Left and seems to have its root in the civil rights movement.I have never been too concerned whether differences arise through biology or as a "social construct". (Differences in skin colour are partly biological but given sun tans, partly personal choice.) Individuals are manifestly different. Sometimes these differences are less marked within certain groups. For example, women share things in common making them different from men. Japanese shares things in common making them different from Indians. These differences are obvious and in fact make the world an interesting place. Individuals are not equal in the sense that we are not the same. And discrimination is a natural consequence of our differences. We discriminate constantly using a vast series of criteria and indicators to select people for a vast series of objectives. People are often self-selected. In Canada, education is a provincial jurisdiction which kind of answers your question. Kids in Quebec are segregated from kids in Manitoba. They two groups don't even learn the same material.

That's not what it means.On average, men are taller/bigger than women. But the variations in heights/weights mean that some women are taller/heavier than men. It is impossible to take this difference into account when designing car seats (unless the car is to be marketed for a specific gender). But in designing washrooms, should the average be taken into account? In designing clothes, the issue is moot because different sizes are possible. ----- In the case of schools, in the absence of a better identifier, sex could serve to segregate and presumably improve learning. (This is the washroom example above.) OTOH, this gain in learning comes at the cost of socialization. Kimmy makes the valid point that math class is for learning math and other venues (hallways, cafeteria, Mr. Jones' incredibly boring biology class) are for socialization. Only Mr. Jones? In my memory, from about age 12-15, kids learn basically nothing. From about 16 on, some kids learn but many just want to get out of prison. In world history, this system where we take everyone from age 5 to about 17, put them into large rooms and teach them the world's collected wisdom is entirely new.

Both are smug. Turkey also has mountains. Sri Lanka has more than one official language. Cuba claims to have educated people. Moldovia has many veterinarians. Bulgaria has a developed pharmaceutical industry. People ski in Nepal. The Dominican Republic has tourist spots. Yugoslavia was famous for its neutrality.MS, what's your point?

This thread exists on rabble.ca too. Frankly, I find the discussion here more wide-open and weird and to the point. It is as well informed. In addition, the discussion here admirably lacks the intolerant school marm edge. (This forum's editing and quoting functions are much better too.) Compare. Am I wrong?

There are two statistics: men's average heights (measured by military uniforms) and average urban meat consumption. I would consider either to be reliable evidence of a rising standard of living of ordinary people during the 19th century. My recollection is that the stats show this, at least after 1830. I am trying to find these on the Internet or elsewhere. Any other suggestions? ---- The arrival of cell phones has meant that many payphone manufacturers/repairmen have lost jobs. The early 19th century faced such a situation. The stats may show that ordinary people lived better in 1770 than in 1820. (There were the Napoleonic wars too...) There should be no doubt whatsoever that ordinary people lived better in 1860 than in 1820 or in 1770. The 18th century produced at best Fielding or Rousseau. Dilettantes. The 19th century produced Zola and Dickens because a "middle class" existed for the first time to read their romantically appealing stories. Incidentally, the art of the 18th century is the art of a small elite: Mozart. The art of the 19th century is the art of the crowd: Verdi. I am sorry for using a Euro-centric argument.

My example of eye colour is correct to the extent that in some societies, blue eyes are desirable. Posner's point is that mere luck does not explain differing obtained property rights. A blue-eyed person would have to be born into a society where those blue-eyes could be traded up to good use. IOW, Posner is saying that law is a good with positive externalities - a public good. Good law makes trade possible. Good quote, thanks TS.

One photo makes him look like an ax-murderer and you draw weird conclusions.