kimmy

Snow has arrived in Kim City! The mountains are wrapped in pretty white shawls. The trees are decorated with a lovely light dusting of snow. Fluffy clouds of vapor are rising from chimneys. Rooftops look like cakes frosted with white icing. Everything is beautiful, especially as the sun comes out and makes everything shine! -k

Quite tired of hearing old-people saying stuff like this. "What I don't get is why they're always complaining about student debt? When I was that age, I put myself through college by getting a summer job! Why don't they just get a summer job instead of student loans?" Attention old-people: the cost of getting started in life-- an education, rent, a home-- has gone through the roof since you were "that age", and wages haven't grown nearly as fast. The result is that people are either staying home longer and moving out on their own later in life, or that they are moving out on their own by carrying more debt with the hope that they'll eventually pay it off. That's why your grandchildren still haven't moved out at age 24, and it's why younger Canadians are carrying higher debt loads. I hope that clears things up. You can go back to complaining about "that loud racket" now. -k

Even though I'm home sick today feeling crappy, today's "Google Doodle" brightened my day a little. It's a game in which you piece together sequences of notes from some of Beethoven's famous melodies. https://www.google.com/doodles/celebrating-ludwig-van-beethovens-245th-year -k

My intention was to address the people who reflexively defend Islam with an example that illustrates my concern without engaging their instinct to frame such concerns as "racist". edit to add: Rue's message makes the point I was trying to get at. -k

"What will people do for jobs in the future?" "They will produce Youtube videos and Android apps." "Ok, who buys the Android apps and supports the sponsors of the Youtube videos? Where do those people get money?" "They will also produce Youtube videos and Android apps." The economy of the future is a hovercraft held aloft on a bubble of its own hot air. -k

I do think that the Leafs are on the right track. Spending $6 million on a guy like Babcock is better than spending $6 million on a guy like Kessel, and coach salaries don't even count against the cap. I think that playing in Toronto would probably be more stressful than most hockey markets, so that might affect some free agents. It's the ultimate fishbowl. But probably some players would relish that kind of attention. -k

The stuff that Cruz (and some of the others for that matter) are saying right now is so toxic to the general electorate that one can only wonder how the Republicans would attempt to "shake the Etch-A-Sketch" (tm Romney's PR man) once the general election comes around should Cruz or a similarly polarizing figure win the nomination. -k

Leaving the question of Islam completely out of it... if you were a single, non-Jewish woman, would you willingly choose to live in a Hasidic area of Jerusalem, or even a Hasidic enclave like Williamsburg New York? -k

Given the theoretically infinitely increasing supply of "virtual goods" and the finite supply of "real goods", doesn't it seem inevitable that the price of "virtual goods" will plummet while the price of "real goods" will skyrocket? Aren't people who depend on labor for their economic survival hooped regardless whether they're building "real goods" or "virtual goods"? -k

yeeeaaaahhhhh!! Another reboot that nobody wanted! -k

Virtual food, virtual energy, and virtual living-spaces have yet to arrive. -k

I just don't want chunks of Canada to end up like Malmo, Sweden or Birmingham England. -k

I'm not very concerned about a war breaking out in Syria. I'm more concerned with the apparent lack of interest in cutting off ISIS's supply of money. Like, if the reason why we haven't bombed ISIS's oil infrastructure out of existence is that our buddy Turkey wants to buy cheap oil, then clearly we're really not very concerned about fighting ISIS after all. Cheap gas in Turkey is not worth continuing to fund this organization's ability to wage war in Syria and launch terror attacks around the world. Saving our Turkish friends a few cents at the pumps is simply not worth terror attacks and floods of refugees. This has to stop. -k

Well... I think it would be more accurate to say "observation" than science. As in, religion/mysticism/whatever was offered as an explanation for anything that observation couldn't explain. It's a notion that's so obvious as to be trite, at least when applied to primitive explanations for weather and things like that. But it's of little use in discussing current mainstream religions. Modern day religion doesn't spend much time pondering where lightning comes from, but instead grapples with questions like "why does evil exist?" and "why do bad things happen to good people?" and "what is the point of all of this?" that science has nothing to say about. -k

Dan "deep as a dish-pan" Brown. -k

That said, I'm getting more and more curious about the question of who "we" are really supporting in Syria. I gather that it's "anti-government forces, but not ISIS but rather other non-ISIS anti-government forces who are totally not ISIS!" but it seems questionable to say the least. Like I mentioned before, the question of why they can't seem to stop ISIS's large-scale oil production and export is a serious head-scratcher for me. How hard is it to find oil wells in the desert? How hard is it to find millions of dollars of oil per day driving around in the desert? Where is the oil going? They can read your cross-word puzzle over your shoulder from space, but they can't find hundreds of tanker trucks driving across the desert? Really? And then you have Chris Christie flipping out in the debate, demanding a no-fly zone over Syria to stop Russia? He's mad enough that he wants to go to war in Syria to fight... Russia? What? I can't help wondering if the real priority in Syria isn't fighting ISIS but rather toppling al-Assad. -k

I would like to see this information from a better news source. The site you've linked to isn't an Australian newspaper, it's straight-up loony-tunes. Look at some of the other headlines they're currently running: It's just a weird mash-up of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxer stuff, "super-food" stuff, and get-rich-quick schemes. -k

The idea that Trump's giant ego would allow him to play 2nd fiddle to anybody on the Republican card seems pretty far-fetched, IMO. -k

I don't recall Romney ever trailing anybody by 40 points, as Bush currently is. -k

Jeb Bush is clearly going nowhere, and Marco Rubio looks like the last hope for "mainstream" Republicans. Ted Cruz has put himself in position to inherit the Trump "insurgent" votes in the event that Trump implodes, explodes, or leaves. -k

Welcome back, Shade-Man! -k

"Giant lumps of easy cash" ... it might be "easy", but shaking down Joe Six Pack for an extra $50 in April is hardly "giant lumps". On the other hand, wealthy Canadian individuals and businesses have vast sums of money in tax schemes of dubious legality. Give the CRA the the resources to pursue these crooks and you'd see "giant lumps of cash". I screwed up a tax return several years ago and had to write them a big cheque, so every year since they go through my return with a fine tooth comb. I understand why they do it. I don't mind. But the extra scrutiny they've put into my returns since then hasn't yielded them any extra money. They probably spend a lot of time and energy scrutinizing other small fish to similarly minimal return. Meanwhile you've got giant companies like Loblaws and Petro-Canada with alleged headquarters on tiny Caribbean islands, you've got Cameco shamelessly scamming CRA out of about $3 billion dollars by selling their own product to their own Dutch shell corporation at 5% of market value... Do you really think the problem here is that Canada Revenue Agency isn't spending enough energy crapping on regular working slobs? -k

I think this has been the "general hockey chat" thread for a long time, kind of like how "Tim Tebow WTF" became the "general NFL chat" thread. -k

I agree that many of the examples you present demonstrate media bias, but I disagree with you on the above claim. I don't believe a secret liberal cabal is secretly attempting to brainwash the public. These are hot-button issues right now. They're receiving breathless coverage because the media want to sell newspapers and get pageviews. I think you give the Liberals far too much credit here. I think they saw a shift in public opinion and moved to capitalize on it. I think this shift was driven by US entertainment media, not Canadian politicians. I had a long discussion with Michael Hardner over this issue some time ago, and I will attempt to locate that thread later on. My view on the subject is that currently anti-Muslim sentiment is a hotbutton issue and translates into $$$headlines$$$ and $$$pageviews$$$. Whereas the media is prone to handle incidents of violence against whites by non-whites with kid-gloves out of fear of being called racist or potentially stoking racist sentiment. Yeah, and that's exactly what's going on here. For the moment they're Canada's "it" couple and there's an opportunity to sell newspapers or magazines or tabloids to the kind of people who'll be buying magazines with some other celebrity couple on the cover next week. If Peter Mackay and his beautiful wife became Canada's first couple, we might see similar interest. -k

One reason why the "low hanging fruit" are preferred targets might be that politicians tend to move in the same circles as the harder targets. -k