71 Replies to “Reader Tips”

  1. Good evening, ladies & gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio for Tuesday, January 8, 2008. Here’s the Peruvian classic Tumpa (earthquake) by Yma Súmac, from the “Voice of the Xtaby” album, 1950 (a 33 rpm record of which I happen to have).
    video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-2015291620849085916
    Yma Súmac was born in Ichocán, Cajamarca, Perú in 1922. She is a noted dramatic coloratura soprano. In the 1950s, she was one of the most famous proponents of exotica music, and became an international success based on the merits of her wide-ranging voice: tinyurl.com/2vmgry
    Listen to her voice (and don’t try that home ~ you’ll be in the thoracic ward getting your larynx rebuilt 😉

  5. Wish I could post a link to this, but it seems none of the media have noticed or seem to care that the Chalk River nuclear reactor has failed to fail.
    I guess when Harper shows strong leadership and makes what prove to be the right decisions, having a major positive impact on the health of Canadians and the world it’s not important.
    Mind you, making the wrong decision, refusing to reverse it when ordered to by the government, and jeopardizing the health of countless people worldwide is certainly no reason to lose one’s job, is it? God forbid we should interfere with Linda Keen’s right to assert her authority, even if it costs lives.
    Bitch.
    “Nuclear safety chief blasts Tory cabinet minister over threatening letter”
    http://canadianpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5gg4SK-JRsqEowBbKxDjlVPhW1KvQ

  6. It seems to me that the Chalk River plant needs to have a twin. If shutting it down creates a crisis in the field of cancer treatment, that tells us that there is not enough capacity available. Somebody, and why not Canada, needs to build another plant. The Chalk River installation will at some point need to have some maintenance. Not a question of if, but when.

  7. In my opinion, the Chalk River isotopes event was no more than a classic bureaucratic SNAFU. Fortunately, it didn’t actually degrade into a FUBAR. You can blame the comission, or you can blame the crown corporation, but you should blame both. And, frankly, you can blame the global supply system ~ people who are supposed to be responsible for that didn’t do their job. Why were other international isotope generators shut down for maintenance at the same time? Why weren’t stockpiles of the more stable isotopes established in advance?
    Under the circumstances, I am of the opinion that the response of Prime Minister Harper and the PMO when this situation came to a head was quite reasonable. The safety retrofit isn’t critical. It should be done. We need the isotopes. Now shut up you people who are responsible for this stuff, and do it.
    It’s your fault that it escalated to the PMO.
    Of course, since then it’s become a media event,
    ergo it no longer bears any relationship to reality.

  8. Just because something has “failed to fail” doesn’t mean ignoring safety concerns is a good idea. No doubt the experts at Chernobyl didn’t expect anything to go wrong. And guess where the site of the world’s first nuclear accident was…yes, Chalk River.
    The Conservatives are the ones who turned this into a partisan issue. Now they are going to wear it.

  9. Yes of course, Beria, ignoring safety concerns isn’t a good idea. Nevertheless, the isotope reactor isn’t a power reactor. Chernobyl is irrelevant. Not that I expect anyone to understand that, given the media hype. The software my company and I make is used in nuclear safety situations. I’ve discussed the Chalk River isotope reactor shutdown and retrofit with colleagues in the field. My understanding is that this was a bureaucratic screw-up, and in particular, under the circumstances, Prime Minister Harper handled the situation well. Perhaps you would prefer that the isotopes were not already yet then safely being produced again?

  11. Len Pryor,
    McMaster used to have a reactor that produced isotopes for medicine – so in a way it was the backup for Chalk River. The McMaster reactor closed down some time ago.
    The medical nuclear business is a moneymaker for Chalk River and they stupidly put their business at risk. Any experimental/research pool type reactor can be adapted to fire various isotopes into a reactor core for irradiation. I’m guessing that some University somewhere will see an opportunity and take this small but important business away from Chalk River.

  12. Citoyen Dion: “You don’t know how hard it is to set priorities,”.
    …-
    Northerners plan protest of Liberal appointment
    Randy Burton, The StarPhoenix
    Disgruntled Liberals in the province’s north have organized a meeting for Saturday to protest federal Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s decision to bypass a nomination meeting for an upcoming byelection.
    Those involved say the issue has united Metis and First Nations communities in opposition to the appointment of former NDP provincial cabinet minister Joan Beatty as the Liberal candidate in the March 17 vote in the riding of Desnethe-Missinippi-Churchill River. […]
    Sources say Dion’s hand was forced by Saskatchewan Liberal Ralph Goodale, who is dead set against the idea of having Orchard as a Liberal candidate in a winnable riding, in spite of the fact Orchard played a key role in helping Dion win the party’s leadership in 2006. …-
    http://tinyurl.com/2xow27

  14. I like Linda Keen’s complaint about “political interference”. She works for the state, doesn’t she? She was appointed by politicians, wasn’t she?

  15. CBC quietly sells off catalogue of programs to British company
    Excerpts:
    “The CBC’s low-profile pre-Christmas sale of its taxpayer-funded international sales catalogue to a foreign buyer is drawing the ire of some of the biggest guns in Canadian television, who question why homegrown distributors weren’t invited to bid.”
    “This is a public trust that every Canadian taxpayer has contributed to in this library,” veteran actor Paul Gross said. “The fact that it appears to have been sold with absolutely no open bidding, discussion, or presentation to the public is bizarre. This is a question of national ownership. What’s up for grabs next? Algonquin Park? PEI?”
    “There is no way to know how good or how bad the deal is without disclosure. But I can’t imagine any reason why they wouldn’t want to sell it to the highest bidder. This is an asset that was 100-per-cent taxpayer financed. As a former CBC director, it seems to me this should have been a matter for board approval, scrutiny and full disclosure.”
    “I have the greatest respect for the CBC’s mandate to make the institution and its programming stronger. But not in transactions that don’t stand up to public scrutiny. This is fundamentally wrong.”
    Now. Will CBC’s CEO get sacked?

  16. Chains around Zarqawi’s Mind
    Michael Totten reports from Iraq, transcribing conversations with Iraqis. He makes the interesting observation that it wasn’t so much the killing and mayhem that al-Qaeda was engaged in that ultimately destroyed their legitimacy among the population — it was the illicitness and alien character of it all. Money quote:
    “Can you describe what Al Qaeda did here?” I said.
    “The Al Qaeda organization is the enemy of Iraqis and of Americans,” Mahmoud said. “We are Muslims. Sunnis. Al Qaeda came through Islam and used it to enter Iraqi lands. They are killers, insurgents, they don’t respect humanity. They don’t belong to Islam or have religious beliefs. They have no kind of religious beliefs.”
    Don’t assume Mahmoud is dissembling when he says this. It may appear that some Muslims are being overly defensive by saying Osama bin Laden is not a real Muslim, but there is a solid case to be made that radical Islamism is, in fact, a totalitarian cult unhinged from the religion as it is actually practiced by the majority. It is they, after all, who blow up mosques in Iraq. I know of at least one mosque in Ramadi that is considered “blackened” because insurgents used it as a base. No one will set foot in it now. […]
    http://fallbackbelmont.blogspot.com/2008/01/chains-around-zarqawis-mind.html
    The Rings on Zarqawi’s Finger
    “I am a ring on your finger.” — Al Qaeda in Iraq member Abu Anas to Abu Musab Al Zarqawi
    http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/01/the-rings-on-za.php

  17. As I was driving in Ottawa on Monday morning, an interesting little item popped up on the local CBC Radio station.
    The announcer (Kathleen Petty?) had a chat with some guy in Ottawa named “Ky Hasselries” (sp?) who had just returned from spending the holidays down in New Hampshire working as a volunteer for the John Edwards presidential campaign. He picked Edwards because he was “most NDP-like”.
    Now Hasselries is an Ottawa resident and apparently Canadian. What was interesting is that the announcer never once saw fit to ask him the most obvious question: are you an American citizen and/or do you have a right to vote in the US?
    Is it ethical – indeed, even legal – for foreigners to actively work as campaign staff for presidential candidates?
    I’d be interested to know what CBC Radio would have to say if Republican “volunteers” from Milwaukee were found going door-to-door in Ottawa on behalf of Stephen Harper…

  18. Jimbo
    Interesting that ‘jeopardizing the health of countless people worldwide’ has only become an issue for the government and AECL, after AECL got caught lieing about work that they said they had completed in Dec 2005. They had the moxy to lie…and put it in writing. The health of people worldwide however doesn’t seem to be too much of a concern though when the scientists or technologists who work on the reactor go on strike.
    Unfortunately it appears that Ms.Keen is being used as a scapegoat, to hide this recent screwup by AECL, and the poor relationship that seems to have been festering for some time between the CNSC and AECL, even prior to this episode. And Burns, the former chairman, is also being blamed, even though he wasn’t the CEO or involved with the day-to-day operations and hadn’t even been appointed until Oct 2006. The whole fiasco was handled extremely poorly, and the end I doubt Ms. Keen will be the one with egg on her face.

  20. ccon, the reactor at McMaster was shut down, in part, because of excess radiation permeating the surrounding area. My wife works there and was exposed to it, thankfully not a health threatening dose. The university has just established a new “Innovation Park” on the site of a former appliance manufacturing plant and I believe they are planning on installing a new reactor there.

  21. Great question JJM. We all know the CBC and others would make the “republican invasion into Canada” a HUGE news events…

  22. Another example of Ontario’s stupid legal system, not justice system, in action.
    2 guys broke into a house in Angus and beat 4 sleeping men with baseball bats causing broken bones, concussions and one 18 year old underwent 2 brain surgeries and almost died. All this over a minor spat between 3 women in a bar earlier that night. They were charged with attempted murder but plea bargained to aggravated assault.
    The judge gave them an 8 year sentence but allowed them a 3 for 1 credit for the 22 months they had been in jail. This knocked 5 1/2 years off the sentence! He said these thugs had suffered “extreme” hardship during their jail time because they have not been able to see their loved ones, no programs were offered to them and they had endured lockdowns. Oh, imagine the horrors and their suffering must have been terrible.
    Of course the victims suffering and life long pain was obviously just collateral damage and means nothing.

  23. Vancouver. re Singh, illegal entry applying as refugee and kept in a safe sanctuary when deportation became imminent (See Vancouver Province/Wed)
    deportation thwarted….. again
    Border Services/the Feds – embarrassed….again
    but it is really only “postponed” (or whatever)
    How can a compassionate society put a guy in his position on a plane and deport him. For goodness sake, make a deal and get this thing off the table.
    To do anything else is as ridiculous as Premier Stelmach threatening to sue a blogger for stealing his personality by buying a blog domain for $14. (See daveberta.com)
    Apparently Singh arrived on a false passport – not yesterday, but some years ago. While his application was in process, he suffered an aneurysm that has apparently disabled him.
    Had he been deported forthwith, we would not be dealing with issue at all. This is the real problem. Along with HRCs, the IRB (Immigration,Refugee Board) should be dismantled ASAP
    All this being said, there is absolutely no reason why we should have to deal with/tolerate:
    1. Something like 1000-2000 supporters swarming the Vancouver Airport to prevent the loading of Singh onto a waiting aircraft on the first attempt to deport. This was done – intimidation was the name of the game – it was allowed to happen – and it was successful.
    2. Something like 150-200 supporters swarming the Gurdwara this a.m. (Wed) likely to accomplish the same purpose by the same means. Apparently the Border Agency people went in early to strike a deal before the appointed 4:30 a.m. removal time.
    Protest, yes. Thwart the rule of law via physical intimidation, No.

  24. Krista Erickson (cbc) has cleaned out her desk,and gone on ‘stress leave’ likely on your dime.Updated info over at Stephen Taylor’s blog.Does this mean it will all just go away (interferenc by cbc in the Mulroney/Schreiber affair),will the Libs and Pablo be held accountable as well?

  25. Another “green” move:
    China announces ban on free plastic bags
    Hanging from the branches of trees, festooned in ragged strips on hedges and fences, piled along roadsides and even rolling in the wind over the plateaus of Tibet: China is awash in plastic bags. But not for much longer.
    Shops will be banned from handing out free plastic bags from June 1…

  27. No, Lunn should be fired for over-ruling the nuclear regulator and turning safety into a political issue.
    This is what the Conservatives are all about: everything that happens is a conspiracy against “them”. No wonder the Conservative polling numbers are not going up…Harper can’t convince a majority of Canadians that he isn’t a paranoid control freak.

  28. Green Revolutionary
    Four decades ago, Norman E. Borlaug developed a wheat variety that fed the world. Now he’s battling a pathogen whose spread could cause starvation.
    In 1798, the English economist Thomas Malthus argued that population increases geometrically, outstripping the arithmetic growth of the food supply. He promised “famine … the last, the most dreadful resource of nature.” It took another 125 years for world population to double, but only 50 more for it to redouble. By the 1940s, Mexi­co, China, India, Russia, and Europe were hungry. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s farsighted vice president-elect, former secretary of agriculture Henry A. Wallace, believed the solution lay with technology. He was right: the Malthusian tragedy never happened, chiefly because Norman E. Borlaug transformed the breeding of wheat, which feeds more people than any other crop. […]
    “There was panic in the U.S. and Canadian departments of agriculture,” Borlaug tells me. “We had to accelerate the program to develop rust-resistant wheat varieties.” Borlaug struggled with a lack of machinery, equipment, and trained scientists. Yet by 1948, he tells Leon Hesser in The Man Who Fed the World, a recent biography, “research results, the bits and pieces of the wheat production puzzle, began to emerge, and the fog of gloom and despair began to lift.” …-
    http://tinyurl.com/yvxhhy (techreview)

  29. Lest we forget: “Reasons Not to Vote Liberal” http://www.lufa.ca/news/news_item.asp?NewsID=5399
    This is an amazing list of 199 Liberal transgressions. It is the kind of thing that the Canadian public should not lose sight of, but alas, many of these things have been quickly forgotten by many. The list is not new, but still gets an occasional hit. As one commentator puts it: “I figure a person would have to be dumber than a sack of hammers to vote Lieberal. Unfortunately there appears to be no shortage of voters with that IQ.”

  30. “Harper can’t convince a majority of Canadians that he isn’t a paranoid control freak.”
    And Chretien wasn’t?????
    Iberia once you realize there is no left and right at a governing level…that all the “ideological differences” of parties is a stage managed affair you will become a more responsible voter.
    Until partisan blinders come off and critical thinking replaces it, you will continue to be the “useful idiot” of your political puppet masters.

  31. Just spotted this in the list noted in my previous post: “62. Robert Thibault giving a grant as ACOA minister to a wharf and boatyard where his brother-in-law has a monopoly.” — so what credentials does Mr. Thibault have to sit on the ethics committee?

  32. “watchdog”. Cliche-ridden MSM sics the fleabag “watchdog” on Canadians. Who is this fleabag, ankle-biter?
    Name: Graham Fraser.
    Down with bilingualism; bury it at the foot of multiculturalism in the PET cemetery.
    …-
    Bilingualism given short shrift by research funding agencies: watchdog
    By THE CANADIAN PRESS
    http://tinyurl.com/2mtgq4

  33. According to most media, Lunn screwed up, he’s the bad guy. Handled the crisis all wrong.
    I will agree with John Ivison in his article “It only gets worse for Lunn” in the National Post today.
    He writes “Gary Lunn seems to have taken on a new senior advisor – one Homer Simpson – judging by the shoddy letter the Natural Resources Minister sent to the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Linda Keen, in which he asked for reasons why he shouldn’t fire her”.
    That letter is an embarrassment to say the least.
    No doubt Gary Lunn will be getting the attention of Prime Minister Harper on this issue.
    Madam Keen has shown signs she’s not going to sit and take any flak and remain silent.
    This provides another side sow to be orchestrated
    by one Ralphy Goodale.

  34. Is it groundhog day?Dion is out of his hole,,doing press conference now..refers to Joan Beatty as a ‘so good candidate,’and true to form slamming everything PMSH.Covering the Chalk River fiasco as well.Calling for Lunn to be let go.

  35. “The Art of Integration Exhibition: Islam in Britain’s Green
    and Pleasant Lands”
    @ the British Embassy, Washington D.C., 5/17/2007
    “In 2005 the Foreign and Commonwealth Office sponsored Peter Sanders, a British convert to Islam, to take a collection of photographs depicting Muslim life in Britain. This resulted in The
    Art of Integration Exhibition: Islam in Britain’s Green and Pleasant Lands, which is a unique exhibition highlighting how Muslims in Britain are involved in ordinary every day activities.
    Sanders is internationally recognized as one of the leading photographers of the Muslim world.
    These photos highlight activities undertaken by people from every other ethnic or religious group living in Britain. This exhibition salutes the ordinary and the extraordinary contributions made by Muslims in everyday life of the United Kingdom. They too play an integral role in medicine, law, politics and every other profession and field. They have contributed hugely to creating the wealth and prosperity which Muslims and non-Muslims alike enjoy in the UK today.”
    Bullocks.

  36. SWAT TEAM INVADES HOME, TAKES CHILD AT GUNPOINT.
    (Cops demand boy go to doctor because of fall during horseplay)
    http://tinyurl.com/2ljsgd
    “Nearly a dozen members of a police SWAT team in western Colorado punched a hole in the front door and invaded a family’s home with guns drawn, demanding that an 11-year-old boy who had had an accidental fall accompany them to the hospital, on the order of Garfield County Magistrate Lain Leoniak.
    The boy’s parents and siblings were thrown to the floor at gunpoint and the parents were handcuffed in the weekend assault, and the boy’s father told WND it was all because a paramedic was upset the family preferred to care for their son themselves. “”
    Tony blair’s Britain??..or SPP Amerika

  37. OOPS, In my post @ 11:02 am today, that should read side SHOW not side SOW! What a difference a letter makes.

  38. CNSC McKeen is making a show of it.
    setting up her “entitlements”
    AECL chair just left, “no entitlements”

  39. For the “Not Waiting for the Asteroid” series, this poll:
    ——————
    In a press release for a Sacred Heart University poll, those respondents who said they believe all or most of what the media has to tell them fell 8% since 2003. In 2003 27.4% of the poll’s respondents said that they trusted all or most of what the MSM reports. In 2007 that number plummeted to just 19.6%. 23.9% said they believe little or nothing that comes out of the MSM with 55.3% saying they believe some of what the media churns out.
    […]
    Americans are increasingly assuming that the “news” isn’t being “reported” but that what they are being fed is meant to influence public opinion as opposed to serving to inform it. In 2003 this poll showed that 79.3% felt the MSM was attempting to promulgate a particular point of view and in the 2007 poll that climbed to 87.6%. The poll also shows that “86.0% agreed (strongly or somewhat) that the news media attempts to influence public policies — up from 76.7% in 2003.”
    http://newsbusters.org/blogs/warner-todd-huston/2008/01/09/poll-only-19-americans-implicitly-trust-media

  42. More “extraordinary contributions made by Muslims in everyday life of the United Kingdom.”
    “Schoolboy battered to brink of death with claw hammer in savage attack resembling Tarantino film”
    By MICHAEL SEAMARK – Daily Mail UK
    “Henry Webster was battered with a claw hammer to the brink of death in a gang attack
    A gang battered a schoolboy to the brink of death with a claw hammer in a scene straight out of a Quentin Tarantino film, a court heard yesterday.
    Henry Webster, 16, was struck with such force that an imprint of the hammer was left on his skull, fracturing it in three places.
    The 6ft 2in rugby player, who needed emergency surgery, still feels the effects of the “savage beating” by 16 Asian youths, Bristol Crown Court was told.
    Four teenagers – Wasif Khan, 18, Amjad Qazi, 19, and two boys aged 15 and 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons – deny charges of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.”

  43. “Sheikh’ Faisal vows to Islamise Jamaica”
    Muslim Weekly – December 7-13, 2007
    A radical preacher has declared his version of Islam as the future for Jamaica after being deported there from the UK following his imprisonment for inciting to racial hatred. Abdullah al-Faisal has warned the Christian leaders of Jamaica to “beware” as he sets off on a preaching mission to see “Jamaicans renounce Christianity and become Muslims”.
    In his first interview since his deportation in May, al-Faisal brandishes Christianity as “false” and “blasphemous”.
    Speaking to presenter Ian Boyne on Television Jamaica’s (TVJ) Religious Hard Talk, the firebrand preacher states that “Christians are pagans because they worship three gods.”

  44. The last testament of Flashman’s creator: How Britain has destroyed itself
    ————-
    That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country’s decline.
    No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain’s entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief.
    Probably no country on earth has experienced such a revolution in thought and outlook and behaviour in so short a space.
    Other lands have known what seem to be greater upheavals, the result of wars and revolutions, but these do not compare with the experience of a country which passed in less than a lifetime from being the mightiest empire in history, governing a quarter of mankind, to being a feeble little offshore island whose so-called leaders have lost the will and the courage, indeed the ability, to govern at all.
    This is not a lament for past imperial glory, though I regret its inevitable passing, nor is it the raging of a die-hard Conservative.
    —————
    The full article here.

  45. Are the British beginning to figure it out? (Washington Times)
    “The “state of the nation” poll of more than 1,500 people found concerns about immigration topped the list of issues of 6 in 10 of those questioned. Among self-identified Conservative voters, three-quarters consider immigration among their top concerns.”

  47. Here is Gosplan and the transition to a communist society.
    The first word in the headline is the key:
    “State”. The next words: “take control”. The headline means what it says.
    …-
    State proposes to take control of home temps
    California utilities would control the temperature of new homes and commercial buildings in emergencies with a radio-controlled thermostat, under a proposed state update to building energy efficiency standards.
    Customers could not override the thermostats during “emergency events,” according to the proposal, part of a 236-page revision to building standards. The document is scheduled to be considered by the California Energy Commission, a state agency, on Jan. 30.
    The description does not provide any exception for health or safety concerns. It also does not define what are “emergency events.” …-
    http://tinyurl.com/2hsows (nctimes)

  49. …AECL chair just left, “no entitlements”…..
    AECL was the Chairperson. He wasn’t the CEO. He attended x number of board meetings per year. He wasn’t employed by AECL. $0 salary. $0 entitlements.

  50. Goofy Gofer is what came to mind when Dion came out for a press conference of sorts to set things straight on all important issues. Well what he, in his great wisdom, feels important.
    That M. ‘arper will sure have to pull up his sox and toe the mark, le Grand Fromage has spoken.
    One could almost feel an overtone of OR ELSE!
    Would Steffi be feeling the pain of the knives in his back at this time?

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