More random links
- Dear Science Fiction Writers: Stop Being So Pessimistic!
- "Neal Stephenson has seen the future—and he doesn’t like it. Today’s science fiction, he argues, is fixated on nihilism and apocalyptic scenarios—think recent films such as The Road and TV series like “The Walking Dead.” Gone are the hopeful visions prevalent in the mid-20th century. That’s a problem, says Stephenson"
- Get with the times: You're driving all wrong
- "If you're a conscientious motorist who still does everything the way your driver's-ed instructor told you to, you're doing it all wrong. ... AAA, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and many driving instructors now say you should grip the wheel at 9 and 3 o'clock. A few go even further, suggesting 8 and 4 to avoid the airbag mechanism as much as possible, but what formal research has been published on the varieties of hand positions suggests that this may lessen your control of the car. ... You're also turning wrong. That ship captain's-style "hand over hand" thing is now out."
- The sorry state of our unions
- A feature piece in the Globe and Mail on the state of labour unions
- Destroy all churches: Obama silent while Saudi grand mufti targets Christianity
- "If the pope called for the destruction of all the mosques in Europe, the uproar would be cataclysmic. ... But when the most influential leader in the Muslim world issues a fatwa to destroy Christian churches, the silence is deafening. On March 12, Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, declared that it is 'necessary to destroy all the churches of the region.'" - not quite sure how extensive the influence of this guy is outside Saudi Arabia.
- Canada’s police among the best paid in the world
- Are the police overpaid? Note that there are quite a few more dangerous jobs out there. Those dangerous job stats are from the US, which has a homicide rate about 3 times that of Canada, so with the highest on the job risk being homicide, police work in Canada might fall lower yet on that list of dangerous jobs. Homicide rates have also been trending downwards in the US since the year 1995 when those earlier statistics on on-the-job risk were derived from. One interesting note from a later G&M piece on police early eligibility for retirement: "life expectancy for RCMP officers is somewhat higher than for federal civil servants"