P. McGee

duplicate post

I wonder if there is much ER congestion at hospitals where there is also a walk-in clinic onsite to deal with less urgent complaints. My experience in Ontario has been that there is often little or no waiting time when it's a matter needing immediate treatment. Another issue is that at some hospitals (and at certain times, like the night shift), a lot of the nurses would rather sit around and shoot the breeze with each other than go around and actually do their jobs.

The cost of smoking aids may not be not very large compared to the cost of treating smoking-related illnesses they would seem to help people avoid, and the provinces pay for that anyway. On the other hand I'm not sure I'm convinced that nicotine supplements are an effective way to quit smoking. They also seem to be incredibly overpriced considering that the nicotine itself would not seem to be expensive to obtain when you're not paying taxes on the tobacco it comes from. Why is nicotine gum ten times the price of regular gum? I don't believe it's the cost of the nicotine. Both tobacco companies and the makers of nicotine patches and gums seem to have a financial interest in people staying addicted to nicotine, since a successful quitter is a lost customer. I also think that both parties benefit financially from the myth that quitting smoking by willpower alone is nearly impossible.

Sounds a bit like the Prime Directive from Star Trek. Are you serious about your signature quote defending German 'racialism'?

But since we can't predict the future, a person's past actions must be considered in judging the likelihood that they will do what they say. Is there some 'ideal' system in the world where perceived character plays no role in choosing candidates to fill important positions? That doesn't sound ideal to me.

But you seem to be making some association between Twain's story and the newspaper articles you quoted. Do you believe that the accusations against Ford are untrue or just irrelevant to the task of governing? Should his (admittedly old) drunk driving charge for example be off the discussion table just to avoid "dirty politics"?

Any organization is corruptible, and of course corrupt governments can do more damage than smaller organizations with less power could. I'm not convinced the CRTC's current cultural mandate is beneficial, and I've never argued here that it is. I do believe there can be a role for the CRTC in keeping communications network monopolies in check. Traffic shaping and punitive bandwidth charges by big ISP's to protect their tv offerings may not be a "threat" to the free exchange of information exactly, but they are a big part of the reason that the Canadian internet experience is so overpriced and underpowered.

A few posts ago I believe you were saying something about "wearing ideology proudly on your breast, and then pretending that it isn't as corruptible and short sighted as any other ideology". Good line by the way. Doesn't that also apply to your own comments here? Surely blanket distrust of government is no less silly than applying the same attitude to "the corporations".

Are we better off with Rogers and Bell controlling the Internet? Arguably they already abuse the power they have.

Maybe a Pierre Berton quote could be drudged up for bonus CanCon points. Seriously though I liked the story.

As far as I can tell, the trend with these bjre threads is that he(?) takes a news story relating to Toronto's election campaign, uses it to make some vague generalizations about democracy in Canada being corrupt or undesirable somehow, and then ends up having to spend the rest of the thread defending why he thinks China's system is better. Although Rob Ford's candidacy would seem to play a key role in this, I still have no idea whether bjre has any opinions on Ford specifically.

That may sometimes be the case, but it seems to be a widespread practice for which a number of different explanations have been offered. Personally I find the "childish prank" theory more convincing.

Was it worth the fifteen minutes of copying and pasting? Maybe the topic you wanted to talk about has played itself out.

The idea seems to be to win seats from the Bloc by targeting young Quebecers, which by itself seems like a reasonable strategy for the Green party. The decision to make him deputy leader after such a short time as a member does make the party look a little silly but it's possible that it could pay off for them.

The reference seems to be to a Mark Twain short story, in which Twain runs for governor. A variety of apparently baseless accusations against him are circulated in the press by his opponents and he eventually withdraws, unable to bring himself to respond to the accusations directly. http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1282/

If anything, wouldn't tighter margins on network news provide a greater reason to be worried about ratings?

Is it really accurate to say that only a small number of television broadcasters still use towers? There are a fair number of Canadian stations now broadcasting HD signals on the airwaves. Pay tv is expensive enough that there may yet be a large scale move back to the antenna, now that signal quality is comparable to cable HD and better in some cases. Or not, but I wouldn't write off on-air broadcast just yet.

At a forum geared to trolls as that one seems to be, it's probably safe to assume that a lot of people aren't who they say they are. There was a certain Obama themed forum in operation for a while that was quite busy with some outrageous comments, and I had my suspicions that the whole thing was a ruse to discredit actual supporters. As to your last point, it may be worth taking note of some of the criticisms levelled at the "New Black Panther Party" by founding members of the original Panther movement and others. It may not be comparable in size to white supremacist movements but there do seem to be some similarities.

It's strange that you would use the word "crippled" to describe the plight of a driver who seriously injured someone and suffered financially because of it. (previous comment retracted)

For that to occur, the driver would likely have made a lasting impact on another person's quality of life. I'm not sure it's a bad thing that the consequences of such a mistake would be long-lasting and unpleasant.

I'm having a bit of trouble deciphering this. Who is saying that who should learn that dre also seems not to understand you can't get blood from a stone? The "blood from a stone" reference I can understand as a criticism of dre's plan: some will never be able to cover the debts they incur. The plan may not be workable as proposed but I agree with the premise that there should be greater incentives to avoid accidents.

Under dre's system I think it would be prudent to still require liability insurance for proven bad drivers, which might reduce the likelihood of scenarios like this. There would of course be situations where the govt would be stuck with the bill as you suggest. I don't know a lot about bankruptcy but could people with such debts be prevented somehow from declaring it?

I think your premise and the system you propose make a lot of sense, although I can't see that getting backed by either of the big two Ontario parties any time soon. Are you saying that purchasing insurance would no longer be an option though? That would probably be a much tougher sell to a lot of people.

I was arguing that the potential consequences of my mistakes diminish at lower speeds, and my rationale for saying so was based on physics rather than just belief.

The possibility is certainly not zero, but it diminishes significantly with lower speeds, both in terms of stopping time and kinetic energy to transfer (since kinetic energy is proportional to the square of velocity). All the more reason for me to exercise caution.