Here's a quote from Bid Laden cited in the article: "Al Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event while America in the incident and its aftermath lost -- according to the lowest estimates -- more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al Qaeda defeated a million dollars."
Blame Gore's run for president for U.S. corn-based ethanol subsidies: "One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president." He now seems to think it's a stupid idea. Still doesn't quite make up for the crappy film that netted him the Nobel Prize, but it's at least progress.
"Last week Ontario announced it will begin impounding cars of fathers who fall behind in their child support payments. What, are mere licence suspensions not driving enough men to despair?" The article also points to a study of debtor's prison for child support in Alberta - it's an interesting read, although I'm guessing most of you won't be able to access it as it's behind a paywall.
I can understand why a corporation might want to do this, but this also seems like a good reason to avoid using any personal devices to do anything related to your employment. (It may also be important when it comes to intellectual property issues regarding stuff you do off the clock).
This seems to have been floating around in the news for a while, but some cookie-related commentary seems to as though it may cost the head of Alberta Heath Services his job. To quote the Alberta premier: "I found the comments last Friday quite offensive. In fact, all Albertans found them offensive." Anyways, here's the video clip causing the controversy:
The first thing that you can observe is that PR isn't this guy's primary thing - in fact he's pretty terrible at it here. By comparison here he seems to make most computer scientists look like socialites. One question to ask: do you want your civil service agencies to be staffed by politicians? This guy's background (I met him at a talk just a few days before the controversy) is as a professor of public policy and in health administration in Australia - not a political office.
One of the things you find from that conversation (eventually) is that there's a media event in half an hour at which you could ask questions. Should you allow your public officials some level of downtime between meetings? To quote the guy's later blog post issuing an apology: "We had made a decision earlier that Dr Eagle would provide comments to the media after the session." and he does eventually make a reference to a media event in a half-hour.
My impressions from meeting that guy were that he reminds me a little of Sheldon - albeit in a more administrative role. He seems to need an explicit time allotment for an activity: Question period is question period; then wasn't question period.
Basically, given that I'm not a big fan of politicians running government agencies, I'd be inclined to let this incident go without firing the guy. That, and he could stand an appointment with some sort of PR consultant to help him better address such situations in the future.
I've seen far too many vehicles getting stuck the last while, a bunch of which I'd imagine do have winter tires on.
On a related note: if you're curious how a bus works as a battering ram, consider this video from Calgary this morning - apparently the air brakes were stuck on the other bus right over the C-Train (i.e. LRT) tracks, blockading all traffic on them.
I'm not a big fan of the campaign against dietary fats. Here's one reason: "Drop that rubbery lowfat cheese and pick up the real stuff. Women who had one serving of whole milk or cheese daily were less likely to gain weight over time, a study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds. Lowfat-dairy fans didn't experience the same benefit. Whole dairy may have more conjugated linoleic acid, which might help your body burn fat."
"A new study says male elementary teachers live in a steady state of anxiety, with 13 per cent reporting they had been wrongly accused of inappropriate contact with students."
