murraysovereign

Ummm, FW, you realize, don't you, that the employment rate is what is called a "trailing" indicator, because it tends to "trail" behind the overall economy by some time. For instance, when the overall economy starts to improve, employment figures will be among the last indicators to reflect that improvement. Even if the economy was improving right now, we wouldn't see a rise in employment until later this year or early next year. In other words, this month's jump in the unemployment rate is due to economic events that occurred anywhere from 6 months to as much as a year ago. You do the math...

Wow. The publisher must be pretty pleased. That's almost 7 full minutes of free network publicity. He mentioned the title several times, made sure to tell people the official release date, read excerpts, got people all excited about it... he must want this book to sell like hotcakes, if he's going to go to all that time and effort pumping it like that. I wonder if he's in for a cut?

??? ummmmm ... what's the big deal about getting a passport in the states? Do they make it crazy hard, or what? Is there some big test you have to pass, or is there like a $1000 fee, or maybe you have to apply in person at an office in Washington DC that's only open for 15 minutes in the early morning of the second Tuesday of every fifth month? Here's your solution: a) get passport b) go traveling c) renew passport when it expires d) keep traveling I've always had a passport in the drawer ever since finishing high school, just in case I wanted to go somewhere. It's pretty simple. Really.

Who's the guy in the background with the stethoscope? Is he using that mic to monitor Reagan's heartbeat remotely? Or is he the TV station's new sound guy, and the crew are punking him by telling him those are the new hi-tech headphones everyone's being issued?

I know we're all supposed to leap to the conclusion that this proves these guys were active terrorists who were rightly detained at Gitmo or Abu Ghraib or God-only-knows-where-else and should never have been released. But isn't it equally possible that some, perhaps many of these people were, in fact, innocent, and wrongly detained for a period of years, possibly (probably?) tortured before being released? And isn't it just possible their wrongful detention and torture may have the effect of turning otherwise neutral individuals into angry, hate-filled terrorists bent on revenge against their former captors? I don't know about you, but if I was detained for years and subjected to various methods of "enhanced interrogation" despite having done nothing wrong, I'd be nursing some pretty serious grudges upon my release. I'd want to get back at the people who locked me up and torturted me for no reason. I'd want to blow up their shit. Hell, I'd want to blow up them, never mind their shit. So, yeah, there's a good chance I'd turn up on a battlefield somewhere after my release, and I wouldn't be fighting to defend my former captors. These reports stating that former captors - former torture subjects in some cases - are turning up on battlefields fighting for the other side are hardly surprising. In fact, they're pretty much inevitable. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." What do you want to bet that particular biblical quote never appeared on the title page of any of GWB's briefing notes?

IF they get some that fail prematurely, and that's IF they fail, then it may have the added unhappy consequence of making the gear shop owners liable in a court of law. That's one of the reasons I no longer stock Aliens. First, it was nearly impossible to get an order filled - emails and phone calls went unacknowledged for ages, and then suddenly a 10-month old order of Aliens would show up at the beginning of the ski season so I'd have to watch them soaking up overhead all winter long before finally selling them months later. Given the relatively puny margin we made selling them, it basically translated to a small loss for me. But more importantly, I became increasingly uncomfortable selling product I suspected wasn't entirely trustworthy. One or two "incidents" could be overlooked, but it was getting harder and harder to ignore more and more reports of these things not performing properly, and of CCH's largely inadequate responses. If I sold one of these things to someone who decked because it failed, and if I got called in to court to testify, I would have no choice but to concede that, yes, I had known there were potential problems with Aliens, but I had continued selling them. That could translate to a huge loss for me, and it's a risk I was no longer willing to take. And I'm in Canada, which is no-where near as litigious a society as the US. I can't imagine how a US retailer can continue selling Aliens in the face of mounting doubts about their reliability.

I thought this was going to be another link to the video of that guy running Palouse Falls... "Lighter Tag"? Jeezuz. Unfortunately, he's not eligible for a Darwin Award because, as stupid as he is, he failed to remove himself from the gene pool. If he dies of his injuries, then he qualifies. But as it is, this guy is still capable of reproducing and passing on his abundant idiocy genes to another generation

As I understand it, the Portugese have decriminalized personal posession and personal use, but trafficking is still illegal. So, no, MacDonald's isn't marketing crack along with the Big Macs and Super-sized Cokes and Jumbo Fries, and won't be.

Actually, not many people really care that much about the nicotine, but rather all the other toxic carcinogenic crap that it comes bundled with. If cigarettes only delivered nicotine, they'd probably be viewed much the same way we view beer and wine. But the nicotine is the least of the problems with cigarettes. It's kinda like drunk driving: all our energies are focussed on eliminating drunk drivers, but it isn't really the drunk driver that kills you - it's the car he's driving.

The article I read attributed the aspen decline/rebound to Elk, not deer, and it had more to do with grazing behaviour than with the size of the herd. But FW's basic premise blaming the decline of aspen on the shoots being eaten by ungulates is accurate. Around the BC interior they graze sheep in the replanted clear-cuts to allow the seedlings a chance to grow without being choked out by the surrounding grasses. To keep the sheep safe from wolves, they leave one donkey with each herd of sheep. Apparently donkeys have a serious hate on for wolves, and are fearless in attacking them and driving them away from the sheep. So maybe tell your folks in Oregon and elsewhere to run a few donkeys in amongst their livestock. We never wiped out our wolves up here, and we've always had livestock operations, and it's never been a very big issue.

Portugal is having some success with their "soft-on-drugs" approach

Did someone say "Wounded Knee?" I can't find the original site or forum this was posted to - it was waayy cooler, with colour photos and everything. In a couple of pictures the poor guy's face was literally green from the discomfort. Awesome stuff.

Interesting little side note: Hmmm...

Gotta go all the way back to the very beginning: Chuck Berry - "Johnny B. Goode" Final answer.

I've never done the WCT, so can't speak to the accuracy of any of the guides, but "Blisters and Bliss" has been around for 20 years and is now in it's fifth edition. While others may provide a different spin on things, B&B is probably as good a place to start as any. Small enough to carry with you, too.

Just a note of caution - you start billing anything as an "Olympic Marmot" and you'll be hearing from the VANOC 2010 product licencing department by noon the next day, and they'll bury you in cease-and-desist orders. You might want to wait until this time next year, when the IOC circus and it's all-seeing eye has moved on to London and Sochi.

I suspect this thing would have blown away without anyone noticing, were it not for the timing. People heard about this a day or two after it happened. That means Canadians were hearing about this "satire" at about the same time we were hearing the news of 4 more combat fatalities in Afghanistan. Now, in the grand scope of things, 4 combat deaths is not big news, but in per-capita terms, that's about the same as the US losing 37 troops in one day. And that's a lot - that would make the news. So imagine that, on the same day you heard that 37 US troops had been killed in Afghanistan, you also heard about some brainless troglodyte slagging the men and women of the US armed services as a bunch effete pussies. How would the US public react? Probably much the same way Canadians reacted under the circumstances. Personally, I think the reaction was overblown - do TV shows airing at 3AM have any measureable audience at all? - and the whole story was over-reported in no small part precisely because of the coincident news of our most recent combat fatalities. Prior to this little outburst, I had never heard of the program in question, nor had I heard of any of the cast, and I suspect very few people anywhere else had ever heard of them either. Would that it had remained that way...

David Denby, in his recent book-length essay Snark, laments "a strain of nasty, knowing abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation" Sounds like someone based their Masters thesis on cc.com

Is there a light board up above the Speaker's seat that prompts everyone to "applaud/applaud vigorously/stand and applaud", or do they just have electrodes embedded in the seat cushions? Whenever I've watched an address to Congress, be it a president or visiting dignitary, I've always been amazed at how the most banal comments can bring that entire chamber to its feet in rapturous applause. The one notable exception was the justices of the US Supreme Court. I noticed tonight they didn't applaud at all, through the whole speech. It was almost as if they were actually listening to the speech, instead of just waiting for the applause cues.

It's also OK to carry a weapon while cross-country skiing: it's called Biathlon.

"Cold Flash"

I walked up to the drive-thru window of a McDonald's some years back (it was late, and the actual restaurant portion was closed, but the drive-thru was open 24 hours), and they refused to sell me a hamburger and fries because I wasn't in a car.

Maybe not banned - after all, if birth canals were outlawed only outlaws would have birth canals, right? - but can't we require some sort of rudimentary operator's course, so they at least know how to engage the safety?

"OC" as in "eight"? Good Gawd.

OK, since you asked - you're wrong. The purpose of high school was to teach you how to learn; the purpose of university is to teach you how to think. Actually, they do. Well, they don't waste time on things like comparative literature, but they do study it at university, and a great many other quaint and esoteric subjects besides. And it shows - I'm always struck by the breadth and depth of knowledge that's taken for granted by so many Europeans. We North Americans look like slobbering fools by comparison. Sorry not to support you in your rant - I agree things like comparative literature can be painfully dry, but they're not inherently a waste of time.