Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Conservatives shut down EI services and then deny they are doing so
OTTAWA – A flat-out denial yesterday by Minister of Human Resources
and Social Development Diane Finley that she is making cuts to 15
Employment Insurance (EI) processing centres in Ontario conflicts with
the facts, says New Democrat MP Charlie Angus (Timmins – James Bay). In
Question Period, Finley denied that a major set of cuts to the centres
is in the works. But Angus says the plans are already well developed.
“Perhaps the minister did not understand the question. We are talking
about cuts right across Ontario to 15 centres for EI including
Brantford, Peterborough, Oshawa, Kenora, Timmins and other communities.”
...
Study shows owning books more important for kid's academic achievement than parents' education level
According to a new study published in Research in Social
Stratification and Mobility, owning books is more important than
parents’ level of education or job in predicting their kids’ academic
achievement.
If parents have a college education, their children have a 16%
greater chance of finishing college. But just having lots of books
boosts their chances by 20%. Even a small number of books at home makes a
huge difference. Just 25 books predicts a child will have 2 extra years
of schooling.
...
Six pillars of Canadian foreign policy
These should be rules in our foreign policy.
Read the link!
Harper Conservatives caught on lies about environmental regulations in Canada
The Harper government claims that our regulations are more strict than in the USA. This is not true. Read the link.
Also
http://www.ndp.ca/press/us-laws-on-drilling-safety-are-stronger-than-canada-s
Electric car with body made of battery
Swedish carmaker Volvo are to team up with Imperial College London on a
3.4 million euro project to develop a prototype material that stores and
discharges electrical energy, allowing parts of a car's bodywork to
double up as its battery.
...
Harper's Conservatives - new ways to be un-accountable.
excerpt:
Does a party whose base is committed to personal responsibility actually
think that there's no problem with making "ministerial responsibility"
referable only to a cabinet hive-mind? And is Jay Hill's extended
waaambulance ride the best pitch for a party which normally tries
to portray itself as strong and in control?
The Public Humiliation Diet - hardcore, but effective.
This diet might not be for everyone, but there are some great tips in here.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Delaying your child's vaccinations could do them harm
Excerpts from the news story:
...
a team of US scientists found that by not immunizing your child at the
earliest opportunity, you are putting them in danger of potentially
fatal diseases.
Researchers from the University of Louisville School of Medicine in
Kentucky examined data collected as part of an ongoing monitoring
project being carried out by the US Vaccine Safety Datalink and compared
test results for 1,047 children vaccinated from 1993 to 1997.
Some
of the group were vaccinated on time - they received 10 shots by the
age of seven month – and the rest had delayed immunization.
The
researchers looked at intelligence; speech and behaviour tests carried
out on the children several years later and found few differences
between those who got their jabs in schedule and those whose parents put
them off.
The on-time group did even slightly better on an
intelligence test and a little faster on a test asking children to name
things.
Dr Michael Smith, a paediatric infectious-disease
specialist at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said:
‘There's not a single variable where the delayed kids did better.
‘This
study suggests that delaying vaccines does not give infants any
advantage in terms of brain development.’ He added that not getting
vaccinated put your child at greater risk from a string of diseases such
as hepatitis.
He compared it to unbuckling your seat belt at 20
minutes of riding a car. ‘You don't know when you'll get hit,’ he said.
...
57 ancient tombs unearthed in Egypt
CAIRO—Archeologists have unearthed 57 ancient Egyptian tombs, most of
which hold an ornately painted wooden sarcophagus with a mummy inside,
Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities said Sunday.
The oldest tombs date back to around 2750 B.C. during the period of
Egypt's first and second dynasties, the council said in a statement.
Twelve of the tombs belong the 18th dynasty which ruled Egypt during the
second millennium B.C.
...
Monday, May 24, 2010
Dr. Wakefield, banned in Britain
Finally, this quack, who convinced a lot of people to stop getting their kids vaccinated, which has resulted in many preventable deaths and suffering, has been banned from practising medicine in Britain.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Harper government's $75 billion Canadian bank bail-out
Frankly, this is all BS.
Harper says he didn't bail out Canadian
banks, but that is not the case, it is a lie.
"But Canada has
consistently argued that it would be unfair to impose such a tax on
Canadian banks, given that they didn't receive any direct bailouts
during the crash - a case Harper made again yesterday."
That is
utter crap. Your tax dollars went to support Canadian bank bailouts as
the following global research article points out.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=12007
Liberal and Media support for the Harper government
...
The media need to start asking the tough questions of Harper, Ignatieff
and Layton. Make them answer and when they side step it go after them.
...
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Scorsese Directed George Harrison Documentary expected next year
Martin Scorsese’s documentary about George Harrison entitled Living
in the Material World: George Harrison, is expected to come out
next year the director says. Working with Harrison’s widow, Olivia for
the past three years the film will look at the former Beatles
guitarist’s life before, during and after his time spent with the band.
...
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Conservative Canadian governement spends $800,000.00 on translated bibles for Africa and Asia
Excerpt:
Can someone explain to me how the bible being translated into African
and Asian dialects is supposed to help a poor weak and tired woman
feeling nothing but despair, wondering how she’ll feed her kids today?
Or how does sending preachers to explain how end times are a comin’ to
women whose time has come now or that of her child’s due to starvation
and lack of proper health care? And a question that I share with ACR’s
Pale Cold: How comforting can a preacher who has translated the Lord’s
Prayer be to a woman who is dying from complications to giving birth to
13 kids in a 10 year span?
Canadians seem to care more about sports than Canada
Excerpt:
How come Canadians can’t be this passionate and channel all that energy
into politics? I mean, it’s about their futures, for the love of gawd.
To me, it seems that they care more about what happens to their
favourite team and/or least favourite player than they do about
themselves, regarding the most important things; will I be able to
continue earning a living? Will I be able to access health care for my
family and myself? Will we become a nation of Evangelicals waiting
while they engineer the end times (wouldn’t it put it past those
wingnuts to do just that)? Will be able to retire? If we had at least
half that passion, we wouldn’t be living under such scary and uncertain
times, or at least, we wouldn’t allow our governments to ‘boil the
frog’, in turning Canada into a place we are starting to no longer
recognize.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Limewire busted
Time to find a new replacement for sharing music.
Diaspora - 4 nerds working on a private social network for the general public
4 students at NYU are working on a private, open-source social network alternative to Facebook.
Here is a link to their project site Diaspora.
Update:
Facebook Rival Raises $200K Without A Single Line Of Code
Why to not get a Mac - by Murphy at MaximumPC
He recently wrote an article about some utilities to make your Windows operating system look more like a Mac's. After getting a lot of flack for that article (basically, why would you want to do that when the Windows OS is already better than the Mac OS) he wrote this article.
For me and my tech support experiences, the areas where Macs fall short are:
- Price - for the same hardware in the system, you can buy a Windows PC for 2 to 4 times cheaper (in other words, for the same quality and power of hardware, a Mac is anywhere from 2-4 times the price of a Windows PC). When Apple says this is not true, that Macs are cheaper, they are comparing to very specialized brand-name Windows-PCs, not most Windows PCs.
- Compatibility (hardware and software) - I often run into situations with Macs where the person has installed an upgrade patch and now some of their software and or hardware won't work (also including external devices like printers, scanners, etc). Meanwhile on a Windows PC, when you install updates and service packs to the OS, in most cases, your software and hardware will continue to work. Or, the Mac owner wants to add a new part. But, we find out the only manufacturer of said part is Apple and that it is obsolete and you can't buy it, or, if someone else makes it and you can get it, it won't work with their machine. The end solution in many of these cases is that they have to go buy a whole new computer or a new printer or such. In all of these cases in a comparable situation with a Windows PC, I could easily buy a new part, it doesn't cost much, plug it into the computer, it works and there are no problems with the OS or the drivers or such.
- User Interface - No right-click mouse. Extra steps to open or close something. Not able to customize things. - Even Mac users are frustrated by some of the counter-intuitive things about the interface. In my experience with Mac clients, we have found that there are more steps to do things, or that certain things that you should be able to do, cannot be as easily done on a Mac as on a PC.
Want a system that is easy to use and intuitive, that you will be able to easily buy replacement parts for years from now, and that you will be able to add components to easily and inexpensively as the years go buy, and that most software and hardware is compatible with - get a Windows PC.
Britain's Conservatives and Liberal-Democrats to form government.
You can bet that the Conservatives will make sure the referendum they promised will fail (badly worded, little or confusing information to the public beforehand, etc).
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Guld Oil Slick - the real story
Watch the video.
"... some speculate it may be closer to 1 million gallons per day." "It's not a leak, it's a volcano spewing oil."
Frank Frazetta, artist, died May 10, 2010
Frank Frazetta died of a stroke at the age of 82.
I will miss him. He made so many amazing illustrations and paintings. Below is one of my favourite from the Conan The Warrior book cover:
Monday, May 10, 2010
National Post sued
University of Victoria Professor Andrew Weaver has launched a lawsuit
against the National Post, Terence Corcoran, Peter Foster, and
Kevin Libin. It's about time.
The National Post columnists stated the Weaver is a
"corrupt scientist". They claimed that he fabricated stories about a
break-in into his office.
Weaver did no such thing. His office was indeed broken into, and
there is a police report to prove it. However, Weaver never made any
accusation with regard to who was responsible for it.
Why, then, did it say in the National Post, not once but
on four different occasions, by three different authors, Corcoran,
Foster, and Libin, that Weaver had accused the fossil fuel industry of
being responsible for the break-in?
Because the National Post prints lies, that's why. The editors
and management of the National Post know that Terence Corcoran is
a liar, but they keep him on the payroll, and don't fact-check his
stories.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Happy F*cking Mother's Day (from Harper)
excerpt:
Harper again makes Canada an international pariah.
By the way,
the argument that 'abortion is mostly illegal in the developing world
anyway so what does it matter' is, surprise, surprise, bullshit. Abortion
-- at least to save the life of the woman, and often to preserve her
mental and/or physical health -- is nominally legal in most of the
counties where aid is desperately needed.
Access, of course, is a
totally different matter. And that's where the West must help,
providing training and supplies and supporting local efforts to improve
access and expand the conditions under which abortion is allowed.
Conservative harsh drug sentancing law up again
Tenants caught growing as few as six marijuana plants in their dwellings
could face automatic jail terms of at least nine months, under a
federal drug-sentencing bill revived Wednesday that imposes harsher
penalties on home renters than on owners.
...
Friday, May 7, 2010
Election results in Britain may push them to electoral reform
Yesterday’s British parliamentary election provided yet another
breath-taking example of how an antiquated winner-take-all voting system
distorts election results.
With 626 of the 650 seats declared (8am, May 7), the Conservatives
won about 47% of the seats with just 36% of the votes. Labour received
an equivalent windfall of undeserved seats: 40% of the seats with just
29% of the votes.
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrats won only 8% of the seats, despite
winning about 23% of the votes. As Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg
said, it is “abundantly clear the electoral system is broken.”
“As ludicrous as Britain’s election results are, they are no worse than
what we experience in Canada,” said Bronwen Bruch, President of Fair
Vote Canada, a multi-partisan citizens’ campaign for voting system
reform in Canada. "The big difference is that Britain may well move
forward on electoral reform, since both Labour and the Liberal
Democrats, who together represent a majority of voters, are prepared to
scrap the discredited first-past-the-post system. The Liberal Democrats
are expected to demand action on proportional representation.”
...
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