kimmy

I am basically with this. Establish this precedent, and you're opening up a can of worms. This is an interesting idea... ...although I suspect that the result would be a cottage industry of med-school drop-outs bumping around in vans with ultrasound machines, offering their services to backwater types willing to pay for it. I think the real answer is to attack the culture itself. Make sure that attitudes that place so little value on women die out with the first generation. -k

News stories about bee colony collapses were everywhere, four or five years ago. Lately I haven't been hearing about it at all. I had assumed it was because people lost interest. There remains no firm consensus on why bee colonies collapse. This research from Cornell suggests the problem may be that the size of commercial bee colonies makes them more susceptible to virus-carrying parasites than wild colonies. When wild bee colonies outgrow their nest, they elect a new queen, split up, and move away. Commercially managed bee colonies are far larger than wild bee colonies, so they don't split up nearly as often. The researchers found that bees in their large test colonies had 3 times more parasites than bees in their small colonies. In their study, 10 of 12 of their commercial-sized colonies collapsed from parasite-borne viruses. Only 4 of 12 wild-sized test colonies died, and only 3 were due to viruses. Sounds kind of like the famous "monkey brain damage" research on marijuana... -k

I should point out: that is what Gov. McCrory wants. He's the one saying that the biologically male person who lives as a female should have to walk into the mens' room. As it stands, that trans person would go into the womens' restroom, go into a private stall, and answer nature's call with no one else being the wiser. This is the way it has always worked in the past. It was never an issue. This "bathroom battle" is a non-issue that has been whipped up by people who are mad that they lost the fight over same-sex-marriage and are desperately trying to find a way to hit back at "them". -k

Isn't Redstate Erick Erickson's rag? He's the leader of the Anybody But Trump faction of the Republicans. Anything you read on that site is likely to be anti-Trump propaganda, much like anything you read at Breitbart is likely to be pro-Trump propaganda. -k

Yeah, but I believe that the amount of infrastructure required is to some degree a function of how many subscribers are being served. A large rural area, at least on the prairies, can be served with a single cell tower (it's more complicated when there are mountains to consider...) because the small number of subscribers by means you can make the cell very geographically large before you enclose enough subscribers that you start to run out of unique channels within the cell. By contrast, a dense urban area with a lot of subscribers in a small area, you can't make your cell very large before it encloses enough subscribers to use up all the channels. So you have to put lots of small cells (and therefore lots of infrastructure) in a dense urban area. As Dre points out, Canada's low population density is largely a function of having vast swaths of territory that have no people or cell coverage anyway. It's not like Bell and friends are tasked with spending money to provide cell infrastructure for Baffin Island. If you look at Canada's wireless coverage maps, they look remarkably similar to Canada's population density maps. -k

The lack of significant differences between the Big 3 providers' products or services or prices. The lack of any significant innovation in terms of products and service plans being offered. Every time I take a look to see if somebody has come up with something new to make me consider shelling out for a real cell plan, the answer is always the same. They're clearly all very happy with how things stand and aren't interested in rocking the boat. -k

It needn't be welfare. It could be paid for by a levy placed on Canada's telecom providers, much like how phones for US welfare recipients are subsidized by a fee paid by the telecom providers. Or it could be a joint venture using money and expertise from private telecom corporations. Considering how during their "Fair for Canada" campaign the Big 3 wrapped themselves in the flag and talked about how they were building Canada, I would think they'd be proud to be partners in such an initiative. -k

I was responding to Argus's claim that it wouldn't have happened if it were left to the government. As it turns out, the FCC played a significant role in not just creating the new standard, but also enforcing its adoption. -k

Trump looks poised to score 'UUUUUUUGE victories in New York and Pennsylvania, states with a lot more delegates up for grabs than Colorado. -k

(didn't HDTV happen in large measure because of US government intervention? It seems to me there was a great deal of hollering about Congress and the FCC interfering in the market and forcing people to adopt a standard that people didn't actually want...) Recently our government has given our media oligarchy a kick in the pants by mandating changes to how services are packaged. People tend to get into modes of thinking that "private enterprise = competition = good for customer!" but the truth is that these industries like cable, gas stations, and cell phone providers don't do a whole lot of competing. In the same way that all the gas prices in town are the same and price wars never seem to break out... cell service prices from the major providers are suspiciously similar as well. Some of the small regional players might offer good deals, but for most of us, you go with any of the Big 3 or their offshoots and ultimately end up paying about the same. Remember when the Harper government was musing about auctioning off some bandwidth to create an opportunity for a non-Big 3 competitor to enter the market? And Bell, Rogers, and Telus cried out as one? They had a website and an advertising blitz across all media. And people hated it. People saw it for what it was: a 3-headed monopoly trying to preserve it's death-grip on wireless in this country. Regarding the government role in things: I think it is worth pointing out that Telus began life as Edmonton Telephone and Alberta Government Telephone... and those things came into existence at a time when there wasn't much money to be made providing telecom services for an (at the time) minor city like Edmonton or especially in providing telecom service for rural Albertans. If you go back further in time, you could look at the idea of building a railroad across the prairies. "Why would we waste all that money building a railroad across the prairies? There's nothing THERE! It doesn't make economic sense." There wasn't a good short term business case for building the railroad, but it was a crucial part of building the country. There wasn't a good short term business case for EdTel or AGT, but they were important in building the province. And there isn't a good short-term business case for creating communications infrastructure in Canada's remote regions, but the short-term business case isn't necessarily what should drive public policy. I can understand Telus and Bell not wanting to spend money to provide telecom service in a region where they'll have few subscribers, but that's where I think the government has a role. "A cell tower here would serve these two communities, plus this potential resource development, plus people traveling on this highway. We'll build that tower, and tell the cell service providers that they are going to use it to serve customers in those areas." We have the 2 or 3 players, but I'm skeptical that they have any intention of competing with each other. From the "I don't think any of us expected him to say that" file... -k

I'm not sure about the idea of nationalizing the existing network, but perhaps there is a role for government in expanding coverage in remote areas where low populations make cell service commercially unprofitable. They could set up towers in remote areas and allow the commercial carriers to use them. -k

I definitely hope they trade their pick... it is time to build around Connor McDavid and Taylor Hall. I think that others like Draisaitl, Sekara, Talbot, Nurse, and Klefbom should be part of the long term plan as well. Others I am not quite as sure about... RNH, Eberle... and obviously Yakupov needs to move on. Nikitin and Pardy have expiring contracts, and I think Ference's contract has 1 more year left. There are probably others who have expiring contracts as well who won't be invited back. Lowe is out of the hockey business and works elsewhere in the Katz group. MacTavish has been demoted to Flunky. -k

...but isn't the current low price of oil a result of deliberate policies by major producers of "easy" oil to maintain their market share by rendering new sources of more expensive energy unprofitable? I recall reading recently that the Saudis were trying to get the other producers to join them in cutting back production to drive the price up again. It turns out that low oil prices have not been that big of a hit in Saudi Arabia, as low revenues from oil have prompted them to introduce austerity (!) measures on government spending and create government initiatives to diversify the economy. I wouldn't assume that low oil prices are here to stay. I would think that these investments that were made in oil infrastructure during high prices will probably be valuable assets in the long term that would probably be scooped up by people with patience. -k

Yes, they are just a year removed from the MacTavish-Lowe era, and you can't just bounce back from that kind of sustained ineptitude overnight. I read recently that before the 2012 draft they had a big meeting with all their scouts and most of them were convinced that Ryan Murray was the guy they needed to draft, except for the European scout who was 100% behind Alex Galchenyuk. Only a couple of the scouts wanted Yakupov, some of them didn't even have Yakupov on their lists at all. So Lowe, Katz, and MacTavish-- who wasn't even GM at the time, he was on the payroll as Lowe's assistant VP-- go out for dinner and drinks. The next day they inform the scouts that they've made their decision, and the decision is ... Yakupov. I don't know that Ryan Murray is exactly setting the world on fire, but the whole story just seems typical of how Lowe and MacTavish ran the team. Convinced they're smarter than everybody else, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Convinced they're gurus because they rode Gretzky and Messier's coat-tails to a fistful of Stanley Cup rings. "I know a thing or two about winning, if that's ever a concern." Obviously the results on the ice weren't much better this year... but I think Chiarelli is at least doing the right things. I think that between him and McLellan, they at least know where the problems are, even if they haven't found solutions yet. Some of those problems would have been alleviated by not having Oscar Klefbom, Connor McDavid, and RNH all out for half or more of the season. Klefbom is 22 and already their best defenseman... I don't know whether that's encouraging, or just a reflection of how bad this team has been at identifying talent. Drafting Klefbom is one of the few smart things that happened under Lowe. I don't know what's wrong with Nugent-Hopkins... it seems like he's always injured. I also think it's possible that McLellan and Chiarelli have probably identified some "core players" who are not exactly committed to winning, and are trying to figure out how to get rid of them. I hope they trade draft picks this year to bring in experienced players that can support the existing core. It's embarrassing that they're once again picking close to the top. Trying to force more promising young players into the lineup every year is part of the reason they're stuck in this spin-cycle. I think they had planned to leave Darnell Nurse in the minors this year, and were forced into bringing him up because of depth problems and injuries. -k

you're a cruel man. I can almost picture that. "...and then for a week solid we was eating freeze-dried rations like wot the pongos eat..." "umm, yes. Now, sir, if I could just get you to download the--" "And it got worse when the foot rot set in. Can you imagine?" "Sir, could we just focus on the computer--" "A week in a wet canvas tent with eight dodgy manky chavs with foot-rot. Imagine it, son. IMAGINE IT" -k

I used to get messages on my answering machine from a guy with a thick Mumbai accent telling me that the cops are on the way to arrest me for tax evasion. Later on, I was getting the same message, but instead of a thick accent, it was a computerized voice like Microsoft Reader or something. And now I'm getting the same message read by Microsoft Reader's female voice. It's no more convincing this time around. I do worry about people with (as Bryan put it) diminished capacity. Whether it be these telephone scams, or misleading computer ads ("your computer has been attacked by hackers! You need to buy our software right now to protect yourself!") ...I'm not sure what we as a society can do to protect people who are vulnerable to this sort of thing. If even 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 people fall for these scams, that's still potentially an awful lot of victims. -k

I'm sure that although he was soundly beaten in Wisconsin, Trump did manage to secure a lot of Muslim and Hindu support, however. -k

Yeah, somebody managed to find a single poll showing Trump winning Wisconsin. Disregard polls showing results you don't like, pump up polls showing results you do like... what do you get? We saw that during the 2012 election... Republican boosters convinced that the LIBERAL MEDIA were LYING and all the polls were wrong and that Romney was going to win. Disregard the large consensus of polls showing Romney losing, pump up the polls showing him winning. "THIS poll! THIS ONE RIGHT HERE is the poll you can trust!" Right up to the very end. The idea that the LIBERAL MEDIA wants to boost a Bible-thumping arch-conservative crazy-person like Ted Cruz is pretty strange, also. -k

Yes, SunnyWays is banned. Ditto Keepitsimple. (connect the dots...) I am not sure why they up as not existing, rather than "Banned". Will discuss with those in the know. But yes, they are banned. -k

I don't think Hillary is the least bit afraid of losing votes from religious fundamentalists. She knows they were never going to vote for her anyway. But there are lots of undecided women voters out there... and if Trump continues to scare them away, Hillary will have the election in the bag. I think Hillary will be thrilled if Trump continues to make extreme statements to court religious fundamentalists. -k

It's about politics. The important first step is getting it illegal at all, right? So take the path to building public support for that. All the Republican candidates promise that they're going to ban abortion, so it's not really a hypothetical, it's more a question of finding out what's going to happen when they deliver on their promise. -k

Well, like I said, I agree with you. But pro-lifers like Cruz and the groups I mentioned have obviously come to the decision that getting abortion illegal is more important than punishing women who have illegal abortions. They obviously believe that they will have a better chance to outlaw abortion if the public believes that women won't be prosecuted for making "mistakes" when they're vulnerable and afraid. Like I said, the mainstream pro-life movement has been trying very hard to create the image that they love and support women in these stressful circumstances... "we're accepting! We're forgiving! We just want to help!" They are trying to fight the image that pro-life is anti-women. Hilary Clinton was probably pretty happy about what Trump said, though. She was telling people "see? this is what you get if you put a Republican in the White House." -k

You have a point. Logically, Trump's position made sense, for the 3 hours that it lasted, at least. But politically, it was terrible for the pro-life cause, which is why even people like fetus-fanatic Ted Cruz denounced Trump's comments. I don't know if you noticed, but among the maddest about Trump's 3-hour position were pro-life groups like March for Life and Susan B Anthony List. That's because they know that this kind of language is damaging to public opinion of their cause. They're trying so hard to create this loving, supportive image. "Women are victims of abortion too, they need our sympathy and love, not condemnation" .. which is completely at odds with the idea of throwing them in prison. "They need our sympathy and love... but we're going to put them in jail if we catch them!" Ultimately, voters are leery of the idea of criminalizing women if something happens to their fetus. It's the reason the Personhood Amendment failed even in ultra-conservative, ultra-religious Mississippi. It's the same reason pro-life politicians (including Trump, and every other Republican candidate except Cruz) support exemptions for rape and incest. Logically, if abortion is murder, then it's murder even if the fetus was conceived by rape or incest. But politically they know that forcing women to carry their rapists' baby to term is an unpopular idea, so they agree to exceptions in these circumstances. If you want the real pro-life candidate, go with Cruz... he's the one with uncompromising principles on this issue. (I'm pretty sure he's also the candidate that the real religious fundamentalists will be supporting.) -k

Well, you've got to give Trump credit: it takes a special kind of talent to come out with a statement that leaves pro-choice and pro-life activists equally angry. -k