Articles Tagged with “politics”

You often hear someone invoke the phrase, "As a __," in which he or she then goes on to name some sort of position or title that gives him or her the ability to voice an opinion on the subject at hand. "As a world leader...," "As a scientist...," "As a schoolteacher...," "As an evil overlord...." Here's something on which we should all have an opinion.

As a person, I value access to information.…

For the past week we've been watching The Patriot in history class. The movie is moving in some parts. There are incredibly tender moments, like when Susan finally speaks to her father and breaks down just as he's leaving again. That part almost made me cry. Unfortunately, the latter part of the movie lacked that same emotional fervour, simply because I was too busy laughing.

And this is through no fault of the director. The…

Now you know.

For you see, Stephen Harper failed to learn a critical lesson of statecraft: never tick off an artist. The problem with annoying an artist, especially someone as influential as Yann Martel, is that artists are, by definition, creative people. And they find very creative, sometimes unexpected ways to get back at those who slight them.

Of course, since the purpose of an artist is to create, and not destroy, Yann Martel came…

Perfectly valid scientific theories have the unfortunate tendency to become conflated and overladen with inaccurate information after becoming generally accepted public fact.

Let me start off, however, with a few disclaimers. I do believe that the "global warming phenomenon" exists to a quantifiable degree, that the Earth's temperature is slowly rising, that humans are contributing to it (although not necessarily as much as some claim, but probably more than most would like to admit) with…

Ah, Canada. The wonderful thing about Canadian politics is that it's been the same thing for the past 139 years. Quebec is still whining about becoming a nation.

The problem comes down, as it usually does, to semantics. That's probably one of the ugliest words in the English language. Semantics. People debating over the definition of words. I don't think it's coincidence that it rhymes with pedantic. ;)

For those asleep, let me wake…

Pluto is not a planet anymore.

Get over it.

It's still orbitting the sun; it is a "dwarf planet", and it is not going to go away any time soon. So unless you happen to be an astronomer whose doctorate depends upon a study of Pluto's planetary characteristics--does it really matter? Honestly, we spend way too much time talking about semantics--it's maddening! Did everyone turn into lawyers overnight?

So if you're upset over all…

The short answer: yes and no. (You can tell when science and politics mix.)

The long answer. Heck, I don't want to bother explaining it. If I did, would I really be writing it in a blog? Wikipedia sums it up nicely, as does this Washington Post article. Pluto is in trouble, but not of losing its planetary status--not quite.

You see, the problem with Pluto is that it's puny. It's the…

Apparently our Prime Minister eats babies. :o

Who'd have thunk it?

On a related subject, you think that Toronto would have better security on its computers. :rolleyes:

Conservative minority government. :'(

Not like it's news or anything. I'm kind of disappointed. I was hoping that the Liberals might rally enough last minute support to sneak a minority into there, but no, the Conservatives were too strong out west and the NDP were too strong around. . . .

The Liberals won in Thunder Bay though. ^_^

I guess I need to get used to saying "Prime Minister Stephen Harper" :|

But not…

One word: bad. Bad, bad, bad. Ugh.

To begin I must set the stage. This is basically Duceppe's Debate. The English-language debates were focussed at the rest of Canada. It's Quebec (mainly) that focusses on the French-language debate. The Bloc, running only in Quebec, obviously must do well.

Lately Duceppe hasn't been doing well. He's been losing ground to Harper. The pollsters claim this is because federalists who would normally vote Bloc because they…

Tonight was the first of the second set of leadership debates, the English language one.

It was better than the last English language debate. They didn't keep on cutting each other off, and I don't think the moderator had to turn off their microphones this time around. But the same rhetoric was still there. Let's unmask it:

Harper: The Liberals are corrupt. (Maybe if I repeat this over and over, people will become hypnotised and…

It looks like Christmas wins out over election this time around, which is good. I haven't seen an party advertisement for a little while now. And hey . . . I think I could get used to it. Hard to believe, I know, but I think I just might be able to survive without party advertisements!

Saw Ken Boshcoff going to his constituency office yesterday while we were driving to Quality Market.

But soon the…

I watched the French-language Federal election debates tonight and abruptly lost two hours of my life that I'll never, ever, ever get back. It was unbearable. The translators did a good job making it look like they weren't reading from a script, however.

t: Jack Layton d: I must say that he didn't do as well as he could have. He didn't speak very much, and I don't really remember much of what he said.…

No, really. Gerard Kennedy wants to stop any high school dropout below the age of 18 from getting driver's licenses. See this shiny CBC News article on the subject.

As much as I value school, the government is once again showing their lack of problem-solving skills. (Maybe they should go back to school. :D ) Getting kids to stay in school until they are 18 is not to be accomplished via negative incentive. Instead, perhaps…

So the Liberal minority government has fallen (and not even mightily), thus the polls shall open soon and the election bells will toll alongside the yuletide ones.

It's not very unexpected, eh. I mean, we've known for the past few weeks that a non-confidence motion was going to happen. We've known that the Bloc, NDP, and Conservatives would team up to defeat the Liberals. There was very little doubt.

Then it actually happens.

It…