P. McGee

Ok, I concede they likely play a significant role, but a determining role is another matter. Another person might see no reason to suppose the opposite was true. Is there conclusive proof one way or the other? Or is the whole business somewhat speculative?

It seems like there may be an element of dogma to the belief that sexual identity is basically predetermined. To ignore the social and cultural forces at play is a bit simplistic. Is everyone who self-identifies as gay attracted only to the same sex at all times? Some people identify as gay quite a bit later on in life, but were previously involved in heterosexual relationships. Was their earlier identification as 'straight' incorrect somehow? It's also been suggested that self-identified bisexuals can sometimes experience social pressure to pick one side and stick with it. To suggest that sexual identification is completely independent of life choices and experiences in all cases would be absurd, although I don't deny that genetics and brain physiology play some role.

I'll do you one better, the ignore function.

Fair enough, I had no idea that the post was so old.

How do you figure you know so much about me and whatever historical knowledge I might have? Speaking of having no idea what you're talking about, how about a few pages ago when you tried to say that a certain highly populated area in Canada had no demographics.

I don't really understand the huff over jobs that require you to be bilingual. If you want a job that requires French and English, learn French if you want it that much. If someone "French" gets the job instead, that's because they went to the trouble of learning English.

Unfortunately the idea was too easy to associate with the demons of the 'extreme' religious right and privatization. Not to mention uppity private school types.

Probably an accurate assessment. But while marathoners or cyclists may occasionally be a source of frustration for drivers, the real cause of congestion is the number of large and often single-occupant vehicles competing for limited space. Pointing fingers at marathoners or cyclists who occasionally occupy a single-digit square footage of road space as the source of gridlock problems flies in the face of simple geometry. The amount of land available for roads is not unlimited, so the only real way to accommodate population growth is to increase density. You could stack roads on top of each other, but vehicle weight is a huge factor in the cost of a raised roadway, so arguably you might get the most bang for your buck by moving light vehicle traffic upwards and away from the cars and trucks. Carpooling would help with density but it's not an attractive target for regulation either politically or practically. Transit eases congestion, but the TTC is a money pit because of its overpaid union workers who can close down the city by striking when their demands aren't met. Personally I like the idea of a city organized, self-financing car share program using golf cart style vehicles for the smaller road footprint and fuel consumption. I'm not holding my breath though.

Preferential hiring to compensate for demographic imbalances has never really made sense to me on any level. Overhiring in favor of certain groups as if to make up for lost time seems to be particularly asanine. Eventually the older workers retire and you are left with an imbalance in the other direction. Police forces in particular would do better to focus on weeding out boneheads from the pool of recruits.

Which statement is that?

I'm sure you're aware that a large proportion of pharmaceutical drugs in use are modeled after chemicals from plants, so obviously not every "natural" treatment is ineffective nonsense as you seem to imply. It should be obvious that funding or performing treatments proven to be ineffective is pointless, whether the treatment is a plant, a pill or an operation.

I'm not bothered in the least by former civil servants working for a political party once their duties are concluded. It's unreasonable to expect civil servants not to have their own political views, and once they leave the job their time is their own. Ruling parties appointing partisan staffers to the civil service is more concerning.

Could be, are you aware of national opinion polls to support that? It's been some time since the Bloc campaigned on separation, and I wonder if there may be a fair number of voters outside Quebec who bear no particular resentment to the party.

Probably true, since for most urban people it has no direct impact. Also, city-bashing is not something many people get very offended over, since everyone has some gripe about cities.

To me it almost seems like part of the myth of Stephen Harper is that he has Albertan, 'country' roots, although he seems to have spent a lot of his time since moving to Alberta in urban centers as well. I wonder how many Canadians are actually under the impression he was born there? Having been born in Toronto myself, I can relate to people seeing it as an aggravating and sometimes nasty place to spend time around. It also seems to be true that many people who live in cities are almost completely unaware of what life is like in nearby rural areas, having spent little time in them. I suspect that a lot of things that get on my nerves in Toronto would not be absent if I moved to Calgary or Vancouver though. Canada vs Toronto is a smokescreen for rural vs urban in this case, leaving out places like Calgary or Edmonton where everyone is presumably brimming with rural 'street cred' even though they live in a city.

I agree for the most part, although Toronto is a convenient scapegoat. I just think it's funny for the Conservatives to point fingers at a "Toronto elite" when Harper himself has a very similar background to the other leaders in question.

You never hear too much about Harper being born and raised in Toronto though. I guess he did his penance by living in Alberta for a long enough period.

Like you I'm no expert, but try telling an auto mechanic that mechanical skills are hardly needed in his job anymore.

Mechanical skills not needed anymore? All those vehicles on the roads don't fix themselves, then you have industrial machines, home appliances, etc. Maybe at some point all our technology will be imported and maintenance free, and we can all either work in accounting or flip burgers.

I think it has potential to be funny for the reasons you stated, but a better job on the mustache might make it funnier. The George W picture is funny to me because it looks enough like a real photograph to make you do a bit of a double take, and the face he's making is a bit out of character for Hitler but not completely so (senile/confused Hitler?)

McGuinty now seems to have backtracked on this somewhat: “First of all, texting or the use of cell phones to socialize during class is a distraction and it does not belong in a classroom, period. Secondly, Speaker, we trust teachers and boards and parents to make the right call when it comes to ever changing technologies. If those technologies can help our students learn, that is a good thing. If they don't, if they are a distraction, then they should not be in the classroom. Simple as that." http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/home/index.php?Lang=EN I'm not sure what he was trying to achieve when he first made his musings on the topic public, other than to indicate that no province-wide ban on phones in schools is likely and perhaps to give the impression that he is hip to the world of technology. He made a similar production about "mixed martial arts", also making himself look a bit silly in an effort to seem hip. Smart phones are one way to get on the internet, but what makes them any more practical in a classroom environment than a laptop? The fact that some (but not all) students have them already? At this time the distraction factor seems more significant than any possible teaching benefit. I agree that a blanket ban is probably overkill though, there shouldn't have to be a problem with having a phone at school if it's not a distraction.

I was responding to a suggestion to fully subsidize medical training based on a commitment to work in needed areas, which would negate the debt part of the equation. This may be more true of MDs because of the time commitment involved, but consider elder abuse by nursing home staff as an example of medical professionals who don't seem to be motivated by compassion for patients. In such cases I would think we can afford to lose those people. The connection I was making to wages is rather weak, which is why I wrote "It could be argued" instead of "I think..." Nurse practitioners are somewhere in between a RN and a GP with respect to education time, responsibilities and earnings. For example they can write prescriptions and diagnose certain diseases.

The same idea has occurred to me, although I think that reducing or removing the burden of medical school debt would enable new doctors to get by on less money. It could also be argued that reducing wages somewhat might actually weed out some of those who go into medicine for the money and don't really care about the patients. On a related note, nurse practitioners can do a lot of the same work that doctors do, but generally work for less money.

I'd like to get away from this particular example if possible, but he was already in the care of paramedics and hooked up to monitoring equipment and oxygen in cases where we waited for a few minutes to be admitted (local hospitals). The immediacy of the threat had been addressed already by the paramedics, so overall we were satisfied with the quality of care. Any time the paramedics have to stand around waiting for a patient to be admitted is time they can't be out there responding to new 911 calls though, and quite a few times I've seen paramedics waiting with other patients for 20 minutes or more at local hospitals. My original point was just to contrast our experiences with quite urgent complaints (minimal or no delay with no negative impact on patient care) with other ER visits where the complaint was of less urgency (sometimes a wait of an hour or two, but still no real impact on patient care). There is always going to be room for improvement, but my feeling is that the bigger problem is the shortage of ER alternatives to deal with less urgent complaints (family doctors and walk-in clinics), rather than ER departments being unable to keep up with life-threatening emergencies that come their way.

Sick Kids in Toronto is the main example I was thinking of when I posted that, but I've had similar experiences at local hospitals in the GTA which I won't name (child having seizures was admitted with little delay). I don't doubt that there may be some very dysfunctional hospitals in Ontario though.