Here’s to the person who invented beer. Just spent the last two hours at the Bier Market sampling a couple of beers and good food with great company. Sometimes, life is simple & good.
Yes. It is possible.
The loud mouth guy was totally stumped on The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer (actually by another guest on the show by the name of Dr. Sanjay Gupta). Ok, it was only at one point but it shows this guy can be made to shut up.
The thing is that I love Moore’s work. I have seen all his documentaries and the sole movie he has made (Canadian Bacon, highly recommended, BTW) and the thing about him is that the passion with which he speaks about a topic and presents the whole package, it’s nearly impossible not to agree with him even though you see the holes in his arguments later on. At least he is willing to put himself in front and center to get the debate going.
So, when Dr. Sanjay Gupta (a CNN hack who provided a live coverage of the first operation from Iraq…..oooooh!) said something to the effect that the countries that Moore portrayed as having a better health care system than US aren’t exactly free (Moore kept making the claim that they were free). Gupta pointed out, rightly, that the taxes on the countries are higher than they
are in the US so the Health care is not exactly free because the money from the taxes are what fund the health care systems. And Moore had no reply to it except “Hoo Boy”.
So I have come to the rescue of Moore here. Dr. Gupta let’s do a little logic thinking here, shall we?
Every individual in Canada is taxed and a part of the tax goes to fund the Health care system. That we both agree with. However, when I break a leg or get sick or get a fever, I go to the hospital and am checked and treated and put back in the car after the treatment, I PAY NO MONEY. No matter what I have been afflicted with, I do not have to pay because I have ALREADY BEEN TAXED. This is something that blowhards like you fail to understand about
Universal Health Care. Under a universal health care, since the costs are distributed among the entire population, the actual cost of a treatment of an individual can be absorbed easily. This is the basic tenet of the insurance industry. Spread the costs to keep the actual payment low. Yes
there are serious flaws with the Canadian system. Wait times are notoriously long. Special treatment takes a long time to come. But NO ONE IS REFUSED immediate health care. No one is told that you cannot pay so get out even if it means you will die. Apparently, Dr. Gupta, that seems to be A-OK in your books.
You’re welcome Michael.
So the next time you see me yawn…..I am putting my analytical mind at ease……
Over the years, there have been many theories for why people yawn. It has been associated with sleepiness and boredom, and, incorrectly, with low oxygen levels in the blood.“No one knows why we yawn,” says Andrew C. Gallup, a psychology professor at the State University of New York at Albany.
Now Dr. Gallup and fellow researchers have a new explanation: yawning, they said, is a way for the body to cool the brain.
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Athens, Ga. – Despite overwhelming military superiority, the world’s most powerful nations failed to achieve their objectives in 39 percent of their military operations since World War II, according to a new University of Georgia study.
The study, by assistant professor Patricia L. Sullivan in the UGA School of Public and International Affairs, explains the circumstances under which more powerful nations are likely to fail and creates a model that allows policymakers to calculate the probability of success in current and future conflicts.
“If you know some key variables – like the major objective, the nature of the target, whether there’s going to be another strong state that will intervene on the side of the target and whether you’ll have an ally – you can get a sense of your probability of victory,” said Sullivan, whose study appears in the June issue of the Journal of Conflict Resolution.
………………
Based on Sullivan’s model, the current war in Iraq has a probability of success of nearly 26 percent with an estimated duration of 10 years,
When the common language of the universe says that there is no hope with Iraq (or Afghanistan, for that matter), isn’t it time to leave?
These days experts come in all shapes and sizes……
Recently I logged into World of Warcraft and I wound up questing alongside a mage and two dwarf warriors. I was the lowest-level newbie in the group, and the mage was the de-facto leader. He coached me on the details of each new quest, took the point position in dangerous fights and suggested tactics. He seemed like your classic virtual-world group leader: Confident, bold and streetsmart.
But after a few hours he said he was getting tired of using text chat — and asked me to switch over to Ventrilo, an app that lets gamers chat using microphones and voice. I downloaded Ventrilo, logged in, dialed him up and …
… realized he was an 11-year-old boy, complete with squeaky, prepubescent vocal chords. When he laughed, his voice shot up abruptly into an octave range that induced headaches and probably killed any dogs within earshot. Oh, and he used “motherfucker” about four times a sentence, except when his mother came into his bedroom to check on him.
I have always seen my dad as the “know it all” person. Ask him abou tpolitics, sports, coooking, grocery shopping, cars etc. and he will give competent answers except when it comes to cmoputers and related technologies. Then he is alost babe in the woods. It’s kind of sad but at the same time it’s heartening to know that there is something I know better than him.
I was a big supporter of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. The intent was noble. The will (political and military) was adamant about rooting out Taliban and Al Qaeda from that country and put it on a path of self determination. The citizens of Afghanistan seemed to want to throw out Taliban to better their lives.
But NATO’s mission in Afghanistan has failed on all counts. There is no political leadership anymore. Militarily NATO is strong but has absolutely no clue on how to fight an insurgency. The citizens of Afghanistan are exactly where they were 5 years ago. Self determination is a joke. NATO itself is fragmented with some member countries refusing to pull their weight leaving the country to US and Canada to manage.
So what happened to the noble idea of “introducing democracy to Afghanistan”? It got left in the dust by Iraq. That’s what happened. When the focus of US shifted to Iraq, Afghanistan became a lost project. It’s broken and no one wants to pick the pieces.
And who is facing the brunt of the failed cause? The citizens of Afghanistan and 25 – 26 year old idealist kids from NATO countries. The citizens of Afghanistan are paying the higher price. All they want to do is to continue to live. But they continue to answer to warlords and continue facing insurgents’ wrath of having aided the foreign enemy.
And what about the kids from NATO countries. They went to Afghanistan with the hope of helping build a society but what are they actually doing. No one knows. And this is the biggest beef I have with the whole mission. What is the objective of the NATO mission? What are the short term and long term goals? It seems like no one has sat down and actually thought about that for a while.
Canada was quick to contribute to the mission but when you think about it, what exactly was the plan of action? Did Canada go in to the mission because it was a quick way to extract “revenge” from Al Qaeda for 9/11? Or did Canada really have noble intention which, when faced with the reality of the situation in Afghanistan, was grounded to dust.
I think this mission is going nowhere now. Kids and citizens are dying for reasons unknown. Our political masters are playing god. And the politics is hidden behind the logo Supporting The Troops because to pull them out would mean “defeat”. I think that disingenuous. And it’s our troops who are paying the price for this moronic attitude by politicians (well, I was one of them
so I guess it’s a poor reflection on my “logical mind”).
The mission has (semi-) failed. Now is the time to pull out of Afghanistan. And arbitrary pullout date of 2009 is meaningless. Start in the next 6 months and finish by mid – 2008. The security on the ground should be left to the Afghanistanis. The more we try and baby sit them, the more difficulty they will have in taking those crucial baby steps.
It’s time to bring the troops back home.
For all sci-fi fans, here is the answer as to why life has never been found in the universe.
“They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“Meat. They’re made out of meat.”
“Meat?”
“There’s no doubt about it. We picked up several from different parts of the planet, took them aboard our recon vessels, and probed them all the way through. They’re completely meat.”
“That’s impossible. What about the radio signals? The messages to the stars?”
“They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don’t come from them. The signals come from machines.”
“So who made the machines? That’s who we want to contact.”
“They made the machines. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Meat made the machines.”
……….
“So we just pretend there’s no one home in the Universe.”
“That’s it.”
“Cruel. But you said it yourself, who wants to meet meat? And the ones who have been aboard our vessels, the ones you probed? You’re sure they won’t remember?”
“They’ll be considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smoothed out their meat so that we’re just a dream to them.”
A combination of a trip to New York, visit by folks from India and PC problems, I could not blog for over a month. But am back now!!
Not exactly a “people’s” company, are we?
It’s not that unusual for non-disclosure agreements to include a provision that the agreement itself is not to be disclosed. But one expects more of Google, an internet giant which at least preaches virtue. Visitors to the search engine company’s Mountain View campus are automatically given a non-disclosure agreement upon arrival. The NDA, republished after the jump, contains this particularly Orwellian prohibition.
You have to read the NDA that is listed on the site to believe this shit.
And so we have the opinion of two music lovers and, more importantly, music sellers who identify the blithering idiots in the music industry. And they are……….drrrrrrrum rollllllll…The RIAA!!
The album, or collection of songs — the de facto way to buy pop music for the last 40 years — is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And the record store itself is going the way of the shoehorn.This is a far cry from the musical landscape that existed when we opened an independent CD shop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in 1993. At the time, we figured that as far as business ventures went, ours was relatively safe. People would always go to stores to buy music. Right? Of course, back then there were also only two ringtones to choose from — “riiiiinnng” and “ring-ring.”
The sad thing is that CDs and downloads could have coexisted peacefully and profitably. The current state of affairs is largely the result of shortsightedness and boneheadedness by the major record labels and the Recording Industry Association of America, who managed to achieve the opposite of everything they wanted in trying to keep the music business prospering. The association is like a gardener who tried to rid his lawn of weeds and wound up killing the trees instead.
What’s going to happen to the music industry? I would love to buy CD’s from the racks of HMV but there is no way I am going to pay CAD 30 for a rare CD. I’d rather just download it and wait for the band to swing by Toronto for a show.
Hey George Orwell, your dream is coming true.
“Talking” CCTV cameras that tell off people dropping litter or committing anti-social behaviour are to be extended to 20 areas across England.They are already used in Middlesbrough where people seen misbehaving can be told to stop via a loudspeaker, controlled by control centre staff.
When I read the book 1984 by George Orwell, one of the most frightening things in the book was the talking camera. The fact that as I type this, some fucking bureaucrat is looking at me and telling me to sit straight and not drink beer as it may affect the quality of the post, is truly frightening. I think this is a bad idea.
I am still on the fence as far as CCTV’s are concerned but a “talking” CCTV…..uh, uh….no way.
I don’t get it. Outsourcing is a really bad word here in North America. Politicians are heavily involved in this matter, particularly in the USA. And I have seen a couple of people whose job has been outsourced and how it hits them so badly especially being told that their job is being done by someone else for half the pay.
But then you come across this news,
The rush by companies, particularly of the high-tech persuasion, to apply for H-1B visas for next year has officially come to an end–only one day after it began.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said Tuesday that it had received 150,000 applications as of Monday afternoon for the controversial work permits, which allow foreigners with a bachelor’s degree in their area of specialty to be employed in the United States for up to six years.
That’s more than enough applications to meet the cap for the fiscal year 2008 crop of visas, which is currently 65,000, so USCIS said it would be accepting no more petitions.
So, 65, 000 jobs in the US were filled at the snap of the finger. 150,000 jobs requests were applied for by the US industry. My question is, why the big hullabaloo? If 150,000 jobs are requested by the US industry, why cannot they be filled by employees currently in the US? Don’t the politicians know this? Of course they do. My theory is that this is a very easy bird to skin. A person who has lost a job here in North America can easily be pushed and prodded into giving up his/her vote as long as they hear the right words by the current opposition weasel. Do these downsized people get jobs? No. Not everyone does. But the way politicians cry and moan about “lost opportunities” to another nation, it seems like the streets of every North American city is filled with unemployed white collar workers.
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Women civil servants in India have expressed shock at new appraisal rules which require them to reveal details of their menstrual cycles.Under the new nationwide requirements, female officials also have to say when they last sought maternity leave.
Women civil servants say the questions are a gross invasion of privacy. One told the BBC she was “gobsmacked”.
Thank god that this stupid idea was dropped. I am still trying to figure out – WHY?
With yesterday’s news of death of 6 Canadian soldiers, the question of the Afghanistan Mission has again sprung on to the front pages of our collective consciousness. And with outpouring of grief and sadness of this irreplaceable loss, anger and blame trickle out too. I usually just ignore this kind of anger because I can understand that sometimes people need an outlet for their frustrations. And, invariably, upon reflection these people are usually repentant. But I will not let this kind of statement go unanswered :
“Why is it that when we see the pictures of dead Americans, we see Latinos,
Blacks etc but when we see the pictures of dead Canadians, we see only white
faces. Immigrants come to this country they had better serve instead of
banking on us to protect them”.
Only a very ignorant and a stupid person will say such a thing. I have tried it my best to ignore such people in my life (yes, as a brown person living in Canada, I have come across such people) but this comment really rattled me and I wanted to put my opinion out there in the blogosphere stating a different perspective than our ignorant friend. Keep in mind that my perspective is that of a South Asian.
Immigration to Canada really took off in the 70′s and 80′s. Now it is a steady 200,000 odd immigrants to Canada every year. The families that moved to Canada back in the 70′s and 80′s were predominantly from the middle class or the farmer class from India. This section of the India population has very strong military tradition. But those people that migrated to Canada had absolutely no military background. I have met people like those in India and they do not like the military nor do they want their children to serve in it. The children of such parent were required to become doctors, engineers or lawyers. Military and policing was NOT for them OR for their kids.
When these people came to Canada, they, unfortunately, bought these attitudes with them. Therefore, you will see no sons and daughters from the 1st generation migrant children in the police or in the military. Even in the 2nd generation you will not see people of colour in the military service because the patriarch of the family generally has a say in matter of children’s lives.
And that’s the reason why there are no or very few migrants in the military. It’s simply a matter of “following your parents’ wishes”. These kids did not realise that to actively participate in military services of Canada is not only an honourable step but also a very helpful step.
Moreover, I have seen that military service in Canada is viewed more as “what my father did or what my grandfather did” and “what my children will do” kind of a service. And that’s how it is in England. No one is lining up to join the military because it is an excellent opportunity for the kids but rather because it runs in the family. And until the migrants are taught that the option of military is actually a really good one, they will stay away from it in droves. And that’s where educating the migrants has failed. Most of the migrants I meet or hang around with would not even consider military or police as an option for themselves and, definitely, not for their kids.
I, for one, would be very proud of my daughter, if she told me she wanted to serve for her country – Canada. I would be scared shit-less for the rest of my life but I would be proud.
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US astronaut Sunita Williams is set to run the Boston Marathon … in space.
Williams is in the middle of a six- or seven-month rotation aboard the International Space Station (ISS). She may in fact break the record for the longest stay in space by a US astronaut because it is not certain when a shuttle will launch to pick her up.
The 41-year-old will run the 42.2-kilometre (26.2-mile) race on the station’s treadmill on 16 April and will circle the Earth at least twice during the event, putting her speed relative to Earth far above the other entrants.
Ok, this is either a part of a secret experiment or she has absolutely nothing else to do up there. Running in space? What’s next? Who can hold the lotus pose (yoga) the longest? Isn’t this akin to golfing on the moon? That was the lowest point in NASA’s history of exploration of space. And I refuse to believe that NASA officials did not know that an astronaut carrying golf clubs in the lunar module.
OK, am just ranting needlessly. Good luck to Sunita.
Damn!! Does this guy have 10,000 fingers cause he has one in every conceivable (metaphorical) pie. Came across this on wikipedia.
15 minutes of fame (or famous for 15 minutes) is an expression coined by the Americanartist Andy Warhol. It refers to the fleeting condition of celebrity that attaches to an object of media attention, then passes to some new object as soon as the public’s attention span is exhausted. It is often used in reference to figures in the entertainment industry and other areas of popular culture.
I will always be thankful to the guy for giving the world The Velvet Underground. Although his contribution with the group was strictly monetary, he however did have his fingers in the “pie” that spawned alternative rock scene.
Ok I knew there had to be a reason why a straight laced guy like me would like heavy metal. And Whoop deedoo!! There is a reason.
Researchers found that, far from being a sign of delinquency and poor academic ability, many adolescent “metalheads” are extremely bright and often use the music to help them deal with the stresses and strains of being gifted social outsiders.
Although this did dampen my euphoria a bit.
Asked for their favourite type of music, 39 per cent said rock, 18 per cent R&B and 14 per cent pop. Six per cent said heavy metal and a third rated it in their top five genres.
The heavy metal fans in the study had lower self-esteem and more difficulties in family relationships and friendships.
Here is a perfect illustration of our place in this universe <Link>…..
When I saw the headline (Passage from India: bank switches its customer calls back to UK), I thought “That’s interesting, so the business model is failing”. But no. That’s not the reason why the call centre was shut down :
The Lloyds TSB in-house union, the Lloyds TSB Group union, claimed that more than 400,000 Lloyds TSB customers had signed a petition saying they were opposed to having their financial arrangements handled abroad, although the bank insisted this was not the reason for the reversal.
The Lloyds TSB Mumbai call centre opened in 2004 and at its peak employed 700 staff. When it was opened, Lloyds shut a call centre in Newcastle with the loss of 968 jobs.
Steve Tatlow, assistant general secretary of the union, said: “This is a victory for common sense. Lloyds TSB’s reputation has been seriously damaged because of customer dissatisfaction with having to deal with the India call centre, with customers and staff unable to understand each other.”
Highlighted by me.
I whole heartedly agreed with this person until he made his last statement. So, people in India speak Martians’ English while those in England speak propaher English. What utter crap. This probably happened because of some local politician trying to score voting points. Barclays and HSBC still have their customers dial call centres out of UK. Do the majority of the 20 million customers of these two banks (as compared to 400,000 customers of Lloyds) complain about not “understanding” the staff. What a moron!!
