human rights

"Canada has not got a very good track record, that's very well known," she said, blaming its spotty commitment on the politics of a minority government "trying to keep its job, rather than do its job."
Canadian activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier

Well said.

Merck bows to public pressure

...or at least, they are regrouping to focus on another, less socially unacceptable, demographic target.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/20/AR2007022001335.html

Rockin' Rona

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j0qFWizl6c
work it baby, work it, yeah that's it!

thanks Maclean's

realistic clean air approach

There are a few approaches to clean up our air being discussed in the public forum, but each has significant flaw:

charging a $10,000 tax on gas-hogging SUVs and a $10,000 tax rebate for gas-sipping hybrids would never work because (a) it's not the class of vehicles that pollutes, it's their consumption (mpg or L/100km), and (b) north-american carmakers would find all the little loopholes that their friendly/bankrolled legislators left in there for them anyway;

setting meaningless 40-year targets that everybody knows are completely unenforceable;

tax fuel at the pump for the cost of sequestering the corresponding amount of pollutants it would release, but any econo-political leverage mechanism (e.g., to ease the burden on politically-strategic industries suddenly unsustainable) would no doubt require at least a few hundred or so dedicated bureaucrats to manage, and last I heard methane was still on the "bad" list.

Here's my idea that I think everybody could accept: a proportional tax program on new car sales with progressive targets. Say 9.0 L/100km is the mark for 2008. Cars consuming more than that (on the label) are flat-taxed relative to that, and those that consume less than that get a flat credit relative to that. Then every year the target gets lower: 8.8 in 2009, 8.5 in 2010, 8.1 in 2011, 7.6 in 2012, 7.0 in 2013 etc. Competition (and profit margins) under these more-representative-of-true-cost conditions would shift the auto-industry's attention to more efficient engines rather quickly. The progressive target would also give everybody - the auto-industry, investors, the alternative technology industry and consumers - time to adjust.

Of course, the penalty/incentive amounts would have to be important enough - other parents looking for daycare spaces can attest to the ineffectiveness of symbolic economic measures...

shooting from the hip

wow, this is the first time anything Arnie leaves me with a favorable impression!
Open Mike Arnie (note: French article)

charter of rights and freedoms

If this continues, the Supreme Court will soon hear the case of an American-Canadian soldier fighting for his right to wear the latest Armani suit on parade, rather than the GI uniform, citing freedom of religion.

If I had to ask...

Intelligence: one part ability to think things through, weighing the evidence, and one part ability to read the audience. Put them together and you can effectively voice ideas. Not enough of the former and you're a bluffer; but what if you don't have enough of the latter?

Updated 9 Feb with:

Success is roughly 10% about what you know and 90% about how you present your case....
- Anonymous (cited on a toastmaster's ad)

Great. Thanks Toastmasters, that helps a lot.

need a new system

Capitalism - every man must fight for the right to make decisions for themselves, resulting in the rich and powerful lacking a sense of social responsibility.

Socialism - every man is born with the right to everything, resulting in the poor lacking a sense of individual responsibility.

Somehow we have to figure a system that can better balance these two, because as the wealth gap widens, the increased polarization increases the social risk (revolutions, unrest, etc) of international investors, who will seek other (more stable) countries to exploit and leave us with sore behinds and not so much as a courtesy wank.

Best Little Whorehouse Clinic in Texas

Capitalism: unbalanced runaway economic system focused more on standard of living than quality of life, and in which the rich are encouraged to buy power to make more money without regard to human costs. (and they say socialism begets irresponsibility - bah!)

On Friday, Feb. 2, Texas governor Rick Perry issued an executive order that bypassed the will of the people and the entire Texas legislature, mandating the vaccination of young girls with the HPV vaccine sold by Merck -- the same drug company that reportedly gave thousands to Perry's campaign efforts. The vaccine is absolutely worthless as a medical treatment according to top docs in the alternative health field, and in my opinion, the so-called "science" supporting the vaccine as the only prevention for cervical cancer is an outright fraud.
[...]
Given this environment, is anyone supposed to believe we will see anything resembling honest debate or genuine science about this HPV vaccine? The entire industry, including drug companies, doctors, medical journals and the mainstream media, is twisting the facts to create the illusion that these vaccines are both safe and effective when, in reality, they are probably neither. Nor are they necessary.
[...]
It's really just a grand moneymaking scheme that exploits the bodies of young girls, marketed to look like compassionate health care.

Since they don't know how long the vaccine will last (it could be as little as 5 years, so by the time the majority of these girls start becoming sexually active, they'll have to pay for a booster.)

But hey, first one's free!

More on this contempt of humanity at NewsTarget.com

Humble Hubble

After correcting an initial problem with the lens, when the Hubble Space Telescope was first launched in 1990, the floating astro-observatory began to relay back to Earth, incredible snapshots of the "final frontier" it was perusing. Recently, astronomers voted on the top photographs taken by Hubble, in its 16-year journey so far. Remarking in the article from the Daily Mail, reporter Michael Hanlon says the photos "illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."
http://tinyurl.com/tzk5x

This is one of the reasons why I don't believe most earth-based religions - I just can't understand why they would shun science so when the worst it can do is expose even greater mysteries and wonders to humble us!

Cause (et solution) mal comprise

Hier soir à Tout le monde en parle un auteur français (Pascal Bruckner, "La tyrannie de la pénitence") disait que "la laïcité était la meilleure façon qu'on connaisse pour permettre à des gens de religions et descendences différentes de cohabiter pacifiquement." (de mémoire, donc à peu près). J'y crois. Bravo au conseil municipal d'Hérouxville. (Note à ceux qui prétendent que la leur est une position raciste ou xénophone: laissez-faire les diverti-jounalistes et prenez le temps de lire le texte original pour vous-mêmes.)

muzak limbo

"...and one of our agents should be free in a moment OR TWO."
that double uncertainty is a quadruply disconcerting.