The Galloping Beaver: China and Harper and and and
Nice one, Harper.
The opposition is demanding to know what steps have been taken to
address security concerns over foreign companies operating in Canada's
telecommunications industry, in the wake of a CBC News report about a
Chinese firm's contracts in Canada.
On the surface it is rather hilarious to see this government get its trousers yanked down on the topic of foreign espionage.
Deeper …
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The Galloping Beaver: Your government doesn’t like it when you know things
So much for anything resembling freedom, freedom of information or freedom of the press. The Harperites don't like it when you know stuff.
The Harper government called in the RCMP to investigate a politically
embarrassing story involving the decision to sole-source the purchase
of the F-35 stealth fighter, claiming it was a breach of national
security, The Canadian Press has learned.
The …
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Molly'sBlog: Molly’sBlog 2012-05-16 23:57:00
ANARCHIST THEORY:BUT WILL THE TRAINS RUN ON TIME ? The short answer is "yes". In fact, given the lower "neighbourhood costs" of rail versus road traffic they will run even more frequently.This article is the first of what I hope will be a series on how things might be organized in an anarchist society. What follows is not some sort of program that is closed to change and learning from experience. It is merely musing and a demonstration that things can be organized quite diffrently than they way that they are. To begin with...what is a railroad.? It is an enterprise …
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Daisy's Dead Air: Wednesday Linkage
At left: Artisphere mural, more photos here.
Once again, the celebrity golfers have invaded the neighborhood, as they do every year. I have complained about this before (notably here and here) and so I will spare you any extended howling.
But damn, I wish they'd set up their Golf Network tents somewheres else.
Got links! Lots of interesting and timely reading around the intertubes:
[] The main reason capital punishment is wrong is human error. We now know that Texas executed the wrong man, Carlos DeLuna in 1989. Whoops! Sorry about that, DeLuna family!
Carlos, my …
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The Galloping Beaver: Dear Jim,
EI is not welfare, it is insurance against loss of income due to unemployment and it is paid for by Canadians. It is incredibly valuable in a struggling economy.
"That means we are going to have to encourage more persons with
disabilities to work, more seniors to work, more aboriginal people to
work, including young people. We need to get rid of disincentives in the
employment insurance …
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The Galloping Beaver: Education policy in Canada…
...consists of riot cops sicked on unarmed teachers, parents, and students should these cohorts object to the state raising the cost of education.
And today at UQAM, students march in masks against the scabs in their ranks. Maybe this is getting way out of hand, but then what do you call beating students in the street and confronting their parents and professors with …
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The Galloping Beaver: An issue of great import
North Van's Grump does a critical experiment, the results of which may change how you think about certain products. With the help of an old pickle jar and the advice of one of the world's leading toilet manufacturers, NVG reveals some surprising stuff. …
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Northern Reflections: Repeating History
Tom Walkom writes this morning that the world economy is on the brink. As in 1931, international austerity has brought us to the tipping point:Then, as now, the watchword among the major world economies was fiscal restraint. Government deficits were up in Canada, the United States and Europe. The overwhelming orthodoxy, then as now, was that these deficits had to be cut.The second overwhelming orthodoxy of 1931 was adherence to the gold standard. In effect, gold was the world’s currency. Individual nations pegged their own domestic currencies to the precious metal at a fixed price.To …
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Mind of Dan: Local vs global
Over at collide-a-scape Keith has inadvertently stumbled upon an interesting observation from an article in the Guardian which states:
The world’s cities have seen a 45% increase in population since 1992, according to the Global Footprint Network, and urban residents typically have a much larger carbon footprint than their rural counterparts.
At first blush this doesn’t even pass the smell test as Keith rightly points out:
Really? And all this time I thought that my Brooklyn footprint was on the lower end of the scale. I’m surprised to hear that my humble apartment in a high density …
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Mind of Dan: New 3-ball logo
Now with more globe-y-goodness
Isn’t it pretty? This new fancy 3-ball was created by Ali Lupu. Go check out his other work and while you are over at his place tell him to hurry up and release his amazingly illustrated children’s book!
Related posts (randomly generated)
What is in a name? The ridiculous Green Shift trademark debacle
Book thrown at proponents of Intelligent Design …
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Facing Autism in New Brunswick: Autism Reality NB at IMFAR 2012 in Toronto, Canada
I am off tomorrow morning, very early tomorrow morning, for the IMFAR 2012 convention in Toronto. I am very excited to be attending and blogging courtesy of Autism Speaks, Autism Speaks Canada, Dana Marnane and Suzanne Lanthier. It was a tough day today though. Conor knows Dad won't be home for a few days and he has been a bit agitated. This afternoon I received a call from the good people at the Leo Hayes High School that Conor was not having a good afternoon. They thought it better that he stay at school until his regular departure time though and I agreed. When I …
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Peace, order and good government, eh?: A moment of parochialism
For decades now the right wing in Alberta, which has been in control of the province for that whole time, has made no bones about not giving a damn about the rest of the country. They've been very forthright about it--firewalls, letting the Eastern bastards (and incidentally any stray non-Albertan Western bastards) freeze in the dark, all that.
So now we have Mulcair talking about Albertan oil causing Dutch disease for the rest of Canada, which it clearly does, and suggesting that we need to take measures to defend the country and its non-oil industries from this. And we have British …
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Daisy's Dead Air: Half Step Productions
.... is the name of our new PRODUCTION COMPANY, yeah!
This is a reference to the Grateful Dead song (below) as well as a covert 12-Step reference.
It used to be said, in 12-Step circles, that whenever you 'worked' a particular step of the 12 Steps in a half-hearted or otherwise incomplete, namby-pamby fashion, you were taking a "half-step." I don't know if this slang is still in use. I always liked the term because of the song, even if it was considered a put-down; I figured a half-step is better than none at all. (Humorous aside: "13th step" was when a sponsor and sponsoree …
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Northern Reflections: It’s The Oil, Stupid
The Harper government's budget is all about oil. The changes in environmental assessment and employment insurance are all about goosing Canada's petroleum exports. As an economist, Stephen Harper supposedly learned something about the wisdom of diversification. "But," Lawrence Martin writes,in the past decade, the clock has been turned back. Because of a boom in the oil and gas sector and a range of other factors, the economy has reverted toward being a staples-driven enterprise. “In July, 2011, unprocessed and semi-processed resource exports accounted for two-thirds of Canada’s total …
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The Galloping Beaver: You weren’t there Doc. You can never know
Damn, I wish there was a magic bullet. I really, really wish that. The times where that wish becomes most enduring is at about 2 am when I know I have a class to teach six hours later.
That's now my life, and the 2 am sweat ensoaked wake up is pretty much normal for me now. I'm intelligent enough to know that those wake ups are training induced - not the result of combat. The fearful feeling is …
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Keeping it Real...: No Excuse For FURTHER Liberal HST Stalling
The BC Liberals, their friends in the corporate and media communities, have tried to sell the public on their supposed “business” abilities …unlike those “socialists” on the other side.
And yet, after the voters ordered them to get rid of the HST, they are INCAPABLE of returning for a full NINETEEN MONTHS to a provincial sales tax regime that was in effect in this province for probably more than 50 years.
Pay special attention to the time lines … because I believe they tell you a lot about the Liberals’ abilities/willingness to act/react and …
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The Galloping Beaver: Sage advice . . .
THE OATMEAL has a page you must visit: "What we should have been taught in our senior year of high school". …
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Sister Sage's Musings: Postmedia: Don’t cry for us, Canada. We publish creeps like Michael Den Tandt.
I tried to force a tear for Postmedia’s Ottawa bureau cuts but I just can’t bring myself to feel anything for the Conservative media outlet but reserved scorn. Like the Globe & Mail’s consideration of using a paywall, Postmedia is searching in vain for answers to the boogeyman in the room, social media, . . . → Read More: Postmedia: Don’t cry for us, Canada. We publish creeps like Michael Den Tandt. …
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