murraysovereign

Doesn't ring any bells from the description, but I'll ask around.

Cool advert, but I'm skeptical - how'd they make those tires roll up a steeply sloped ramp?

It's the Vancouver Police Department training for the annual Stanley Cup Riot.

That was one of the arguments against pursuing the Winter Olympics for Vancouver/Whistler: it would cause a shortage of skilled labour during the build-up. I agree it appears to be a positive outcome, rather than negative - from the perspective of a job-seeker. But given that your headline is from the "business" section, it's appropriate. From the perspective of business, a labour shortage is not a good thing. Wages go up, production capacity is reduced. You end up paying higher expenses on lower sales - that's an undesireable combination.

I quit smoking about 10-11 years ago now. Saved up all the money I'd been spending on tobacco and used it to buy a touring bike, tent, hiking boots, stuff like that(and I was amazed at how quickly it accumulated). Then I loaded everything onto the bike and pedalled off into the Rockies for a month of cycling, camping, hiking and scrambling to get my lungs back in working order and put the "smoker" phase behind me once and for all. I soon noticed that, even when they were passing me at 70 mph on the Icefields Parkway or Rogers Pass, I could distinguish the "smoking" cars from the "non-smoking" cars because the smoking cars left a noticeable contrail of cigarette exhaust. So after we finish bankrupting all the bars by making their customers smoke outside or in a separate room, my next campaign will be to ban smoking in your car while driving in the Rockies, 'cause it stinks the whole place up.

Not too many years ago, it was almost impossible to find such a work-place. Offices, theatres, barbershops, department stores, supermarkets, even hospitals all shared that familiar blue haze in the air caused by the 1/3 of the workforce who had a "right" to work in a smoke-filled workplace. People who wanted to work in a smoke-free environment were out of luck, because it didn't exist. I remember watching movies through a haze of smoke. I remember watching the clerks pushing that big wide broom up and down the aisles of the Hudson's Bay store, sweeping up all the ashes and butts that people just dropped on the floor and stepped on. I remember Greyhound rides and airplane trips that left me feeling like I worked in a coal mine. I can even remember myself not too many years ago walking through the produce department at the local Safeway, checking out the mushrooms and carrots with a smoke hanging out of my mouth. It was just accepted that smokers had the right to smoke and anyone who didn't want to breath the fumes could sit outside, or they could stay home. Those were your choices, because there were no "smoke-free" environments anywhere. Those were what we call "the good old days". Do I miss them? Not a bit. As for the "loss of business" argument - hogwash. Those supermarkets I used to smoke in are still in business and doing just fine, thank you. Banning smoking in the grocery stores didn't affect their sales one bit. Same goes for the theatres, and the department stores, and the buses and trains and airlines and office buildings and banks and hospitals (well, maybe hospitals are seeing business drop off as more people quit smoking, but I don't hear them complaining about it). Saying you can't smoke in the grocery store isn't the same as saying you can't smoke at all. You just can't do it in the grocery store. You're not allowed to fire off handguns in the grocery store, either - if you want to do that you can go to the firing range. And if you want to have a smoke, go right ahead, just go outside first. What's the big deal?

There was some talk in Victoria of changing the Motor Vehicles Act to allow people to transfer their plates between two vehicles for exactly this reason. You could own two cars, but only have plates on the one you're actually driving, so people have the option of having a high-efficiency commuter as well as a less efficient, larger vehicle when it's needed. Last I heard they were discussing it with law enforcement agencies, who had some concerns about keeping track of which plates are registered to which vehicles, but it sounded fairly promising. Haven't heard anything further about it in the last few months, but I hope it's still being considered.

I use a similar, highly subjective method: if you don't trust a piece of climbing equipment, for whatever reason, you should replace it.

You're thinking of the Coquihalla Highway, not the Trans-Canada. That highway largely follows the route of Canadian Pacific Railway's old Kettle Valley line. The head engineer, a fellow named McCulloch, was indeed a big Shakespeare fan and named all the various sections after characters from the Bard's plays. When the highway was built following the same route, the original names were kept, and are now attached to the various interchanges and avalanche control gun positions. So as you drive from Hope to Merritt, you pass spots designated "Othello" and "Iago" and so on. That railway was an incredible piece of work, even by today's standards. If there are any rail buffs out there, pick up a copy of "McCulloch's Wonder", which tells the whole story - including the Shakespearean connection.

Simple enough explanation for that: if I had a minute or two in which to pick a car, break in, root through it, and get lost, I'd probably opt for an out-of-province plate over local plates because the tourist is more likely to have a bunch of stuff in the vehicle with them. So if I was b&e'ing cars in Alberta, I'd look for Ontario or BC or Washington plates. If I was operating in Washington, I'd look for BC or Oregon or Florida plates if I had the choice. Thieves may be worthless peices of scum, but they're not stupid. Look at a map of BC. If you want to drive east-west, you have very few choices as to routes for highways. Mountains have a way of getting in the way, forcing you to go out of your way to get around them. In all of the Canadian Rockies, there are maybe a half-dozen viable routes for highways to follow, and none of them permit straight lines. If you want to go to Alaska, that's no problem, because the ranges run north-south, and you can travel in a pretty direct line all the way from Hope to the Yukon. But if you're going from Vancouver to Banff, you're going to have to take a pretty circuitous route no matter which highway you opt for. In fact, the Trans-Canada is one of the more direct options. Might as well just accept it, relax, and enjoy the trip.

Hi Don, thanks for giving a far more detailed explanation than I could ever be bothered to do. I opted for the "thumbnail sketch" and in so doing over-simplified in the interest of brevity. The main point still stands - that gross margins in Canada are significantly lower than in the US, so there's little or no room left for additional discounting, which was the original question that started this thread. And please don't think that I'm "damning" MEC - far from it. The existence of MEC has allowed the development of an "outdoor" market in Canada of a size that simply wouldn't exist otherwise. The independent retailers like myself are simply feeding on the edges of that market. If MEC disappeared tomorrow, as some independents wish, the effect on the Canadian retail market would be dramatic, and many of those same independents would find themselves struggling to survive the disruption. I think it's the Chinese (it always the Chinese, isn't it?) who say "be careful what you wish for - you just might get it"? Me, I'll take the relative stability of the current arrangement. I'm having a hard enough time trying to figure out what the dollar is going to do next, without having to also contend with a completely transformed competitive landscape. Of course, I'd still prefer to see people buy from independents like myself, rather than MEC or the Forzani Group, but I may be just a little bit biased.

Aha! My bad - first time reading Rush I could have sworn he referred to "debt", not deficit. Mea culpa. Still, according to the files you cite, the projected deficit for 2004 is tied for 7th-highest post-war deficit as %gdp. So it isn't a record, but if it placed much higher it'd have to submit to a mandatory urine test. And the deficit and debt are not exactly unrelated, are they? If the US was debt-free, then running the occasional deficit wouldn't be a problem, but there is a substantial accumulated debt which means further annual deficits are a problem. Taken in isolation, the annual deficit may be "tiny", but when you add it to all the other "tiny" deficits, you end up with a 48.9% debt-gdp ratio, and it's increasing. And I stand by my contention that Rush and his ilk would be far less forgiving if these deficits were occurring under a Democrat president. The simple fact is that Rimbaugh bases his positions not on principles, but on partisanship, and his pronouncements are just as suspect as Al Franken's or Michael Moore's.

Let's look at this from a slightly different perspective, in keeping with the thread title's reference to the debt and media bias. Let's imagine that, hypothetically, we're talking about debt-gdp under a former president, say... Clinton. If the debt-gdp under Clinton was 48.9%, what words would Rush Limbaugh be using to describe it? I'm willing to bet that "tiny" wouldn't be one of them.

The only reference I found - in an admittedly very brief search - was in a Toronto Globe & Mail article discussing this week's federal budget presentation. It reports that Canada'a debt-GDP ratio is projected to be 34% in 2004. By contrast, the U.S. "is now expected to reach a debt-GDP level of 48.9 per cent in 2004." (source) I don't know what is considered an appropriate level, but I'd say even 34% is still significant, so describing 48.9% as "tiny" is a bit disingenuous.

Fairweather's remarks consisted of criticizing the UN and EU for their ineffectiveness, and it was those remarks I was responding to. He made no mention whatsoever of the US' role in things, and I don't presume to know what his thoughts might be - if any - regarding the US' role. As far as reading the rest of the thread, yes, I have. I made no claim to be responding to every comment made by every contributor to the thread, nor would I ever attempt such a thing. This thread is pretty convoluted by now (you may recall we started out talking about Iraq, and have somehow managed to travel a few thousand miles to the west); no one response could possibly address every point that been raised along the way. Now if you'll all excuse me, D.O.A. is about to start at the Brew Pub, so I'll leave you to continue the discussion without me.

That's OK, Fairweather, we wouldn't expect you to actually check your facts before spouting off. You're right, Kosovo is still a mess. Generations of ethnic hatred won't disappear overnight, no matter how hard we bomb them. And no, the UN and NATO haven't succeeded in solving the area's problems, but they've at least managed to keep the bloodshed to a minimum, which is no mean feat considering the vigour with which the various ethnic groups were pursuing one another's eradication. As for the EU, those NATO troops in Kosovo are from Germany, France, Britain, and Italy - the EU, in other words - as well as an American contingent. There are also forces from Canada, the Netherlands, and various other countries. If they've been as ineffective as you claim, then the blame falls as much on the American contingent as any other. Perhaps you'd prefer that everyone withdraw and let the massacres resume? After all, the intervention has been less than perfectly effective, so we might as well just give up altogether, right? Or do you have a solution in mind beyond just slagging the various countries that are trying their damnedest to resolve an incredibly complex problem? If so, I'm sure we'd all love to hear it.

Clinton didn't "start" the war in Kosovo. In fact, it had been going for quite some time, and the international community had been pleading with NATO, and particularly the U.S., to intervene in hopes of a) stopping the bloodshed and b) preventing its spread throughout the rest of an unstable region. NATO had been there for some time, but it was becoming increasingly apparent that either a major air campaign or a deployment of hundreds of thousands of ground forces was going to be needed. Nobody wanted to send in ground forces, fearing a meat-grinder, so the air campaign was the default option. The United States eventually agreed to help out, and the worst of the civil war ended soon after they got involved. Somehow this is a black mark on Clinton's record? and Mattp: 1) There have been a number of NATO casualties in the former Yugoslavia, but you may be right that none of them were Americans. In any case I'm not sure that's the standard we should be using to determine the "rightness" of a particular action. 2) Kosovo is still officially a part of Serbia-Montenegro, but has been under U.N. administration since sometime in the late 90s. The rest of Serbia is now comparatively calm, with Milosevic and his key supporters in The Hague awaiting trial, but Kosovo itself is still a bit of a powder-keg. 3) Yes, a good deal of bloodshed was prevented. But it's not over yet - just yesterday NATO announced the deployment of an additional 350 troops to Kosovo in an effort to quell an outbreak of ethnic fighting that killed a few dozen and injured hundreds. That brings the total of NATO/UN troops in the region to just under 19,000.

Answer? See question #2 Answer: the Vice-President, i.e. Dick Cheney. That is why not to impeach Bush. Ever.

Sounds like things kept going at the after-party

As long as he's running over Frenchmen, what do we care? Hell, I'll pay for his gas!

Hey, Peter, good luck trying to get the thread back on topic. It looks like klenke and j_b have got all tangled up in barbed wire, so it could take a while for them to extricate themselves. You might as well go for a walk or something until they get themselves sorted out. Me, I'm off to do the banking, then maybe coffee and a newspaper somewhere dry.

Agreed, if that was the case then they should be rebuked, but there's nothing in the article to suggest that's what was happening. Iran laid out the framework of a plan, and the Swiss relayed it to Washington. They probably also relayed Washington's response back to Tehran, and so on. That's how it works, and there's no-one on earth with more experience at it than the Swiss. Where do you get that they are "negotiating for the U.S. or pushing the U.S. by telling the world we aren't responding to what they feel is a decent offer"? The article doesn't say that the Swiss were carrying on active negotiations, nor does it claim that the Swiss went public with the information. All I see is that the Swiss were rebuked, but no reason is given.

"Axis of Evil" is one of Canada's more regrettable exports - right up there with Celine Dion and William Shattner. David Frum - the son of one of our all-time most esteemed CBC journalists - went off to Washington to write speeches for George II, and he wrote that "Axis of Evil" speech. He's back in Canada now, and HE WON'T SHUT UP ABOUT IT ALREADY!! Talk about a one-hit-wonder. Why couldn't you have deported him to Syria where he could be imprisoned and tortured, the way you do with so many other Canadian nationals?

I see Cheney and Rumsfeld are opposed, which just confirms for me that the idea must have merit. Anyone have any ideas why the Swiss were chewed out for "exceeding their mandate"? I thought their mandate in this was to be the conduit between Tehran and Washington, and it appears they have been doing just that. So who in Washington is taking shots at the messenger, and why?

Without having heard the actual report to know the context in which it was used, I don't know which way to respond. Certainly, the term is thrown around by various groups as sort of a catch-all phrase to refer to all the perceived evils of globalization and US military hegemony and Big Oil (as distinct from "Small Oil", I suppose) and clear-cut logging and private health insurance. To some people, everything must be a conspiracy because there's no other way for them to explain that they don't understand what's happening. But the term "New World Order" is not solely the preserve of conspiracy-theorists. Adolph Hitler used it quite openly to describe his long-term vision for a world dominated by the Aryan race, and more recently President George Bush the First called for the establishment of a New World Order during Gulf War Sr. He was speaking in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, and I don't think his intentions were quite so nefarious as Hitler's, but that didn't stop the conspiracy-theorists from latching onto his ill-chosen words and waving them about for all to see. Kinda like President George Bush the Second calling for a "New Crusade" in the wake of September 11: no-one seriously suggests that it was anything more than an unbelievably stupid choice of words, but it's not surprising at all that much of the Muslim world has been reluctant to help out. Some words and phrases have historical meanings that run far deeper than their dictionary definitions, like Holocaust, and Crusade, and New World Order. They need to be used with great caution, if at all. So while "New World Order" is just a joke in some instances, there have been recent instances of its legitimate, albeit ill-advised use at the highest levels in serious discussions of international relations generally and US foreign policy specifically.