. @CBC admits it paid taxpayer's money to @ggreenwald for access to Snowden's documents but won't say how much. #NSA #NSAFiles #cdnpoli
— Alistair MacDonald (@macdonaldajm) November 29, 2013
Reader Tips
Tonight, some agonizing hilarious footage from the annual northern struggle: here’s The People vs Winter.
If that hits a little too close to home, or brings back bad memories, Austria’s Hansi Hinterseer will make it right.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Great Moments In Socialism
h/t Dave S
This Day In History
“Given the known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague-Dawley rat…”
A heavily criticized study of the effects of genetically modified maize and the Roundup herbicide on rats is being retracted — one way or another.
The paper — by Gilles Seralini and colleagues — was published in Food and Chemical Toxicology last year. There have been calls for retraction since then, along with other criticism and a lengthy exchange of letters in the journal. Meanwhile, the paper has been cited 28 times, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge, and the French National Assembly (their lower house of Parliament) held a long hearing on the paper last year, with Seralini and other scientists testifying.
Now, as reported in the French media, the editor of the journal, A. Wallace Hayes, has sent Seralini a letter saying that the paper will be retracted if Seralini does not agree to withdraw it.
Operation Empty Chair
Reuters: Iran says to continue building at Arak nuclear site despite deal
Cold, Wet Hands
And in the twinkling of a national broadcaster’s eye, civilian oversight of police becomes inappropriate;
Documents obtained by CBC News show just how much pressure the Mounties were under to justify to their political masters the decision to seize firearms from evacuated homes at the height of the Alberta floods last spring. The emails paint a picture of a police force trying to juggle the demands of policing in an emergency with public and political criticisms.
The G20 seems a lifetime ago….
It’s Probably Nothing
Luckily, that big glowing ball in the sky has no effect on climate – CERN scientist Jasper Kirkby says another Maunder Minimum in solar activity could occur by 2015
Unrelated.
Not Watching For The Asteroid
 |
Simply inexplicable: Data released Tuesday show CNN shedding 48 percent of total viewers since last November and MSNBC dropping 45 percent. The numbers were even worse in the all important demographic of people aged 25 to 54 as CNN’s ratings dropped 59 percent and MSNBC’s 52 percent. |
Oh, Shiny Pony!
Goodbye energy policy, agriculture, and taxation – hello gender-neutral bathrooms.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
It’s the energy density, stupid.
If we take the American Wind Energy Association’s claim that 60,000 megawatts of wind-energy capacity can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 80 million tons per year, then simple math shows that if we wanted to stop the growth in global carbon dioxide emissions by using wind energy alone, we would have to install about 375,000 megawatts of new wind-energy capacity every year. If we assume each turbine has a capacity of two megawatts, that would mean installing 187,500 wind turbines every year, or nearly 500 every day.
How much land would all those wind turbines require? Again, the math is straightforward. The power density of wind energy is 1 watt per square meter [PDF]. Therefore, merely halting the growth in carbon dioxide emissions with wind energy would require covering a land area of about 375 billion square meters or 375,000 square kilometers — an area the size of Germany — and we would have to do so every year.
What would that mean on a daily basis? Using wind alone to stop the growth in carbon dioxide emissions would require us to cover about 1,000 square kilometers with wind turbines — a land area about 17 times the size of Manhattan Island — and we would have to do so every day. Given the ongoing backlash against the wind industry that is already underway here in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and Australia, the silliness of such a proposal is obvious.
Send this link on to your MP. And your MLA. And your Premier.
Reader Tips
Tonight we watch the controversial, and some say alarming, viral video in which Gavin McInnes demonstrates — on his own son, no less — How To Fight A Baby.
h/t JoeFrmEdm
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
I Amuse Myself
Calling Dick Gozinya, Buster Hymen and Hugh G. Rection >> http://t.co/IJjmrZ5Y3P #byelxn41 #cdnpoli
— Katewerk (@katewerk) November 28, 2013
E. Jack U. Layton just sent his regards.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
I Can Spot Immigrants ‘Just Looking at Faces’
Cold, Canadian Hands
The federal government has cancelled a tender for a study on the environmental impact of lead shot and bullets. […]
“We know that the Liberals and the NDP probably would have continued this study on the grounds that the environmental impact of bullets on the forest floor would have been a good pretext for onerous environmental restrictions on the use of bullets,” Calandra told the Commons.
Write your MP and thank them – particularly if your MP also happens to be a hair-pulling, anti-gun leftist.
We Can Only Hope (Bumped for update)
“…the end of CBC as we know it”.
Without the anchor of hockey exclusivity, and a Saturday night package that routinely drew audiences that doubled and tripled the CBC’s viewership for even its strongest non-hockey programs, the public broadcaster is about to see its reach fall off a cliff.
Pollspotting: Would you like to see Don Cherry stay with Hockey Night in Canada?
UPDATE
The Prime Minister’s Office has slammed the door on any bailout for the CBC to make up for lost advertising revenue from hockey broadcasts.
“CBC already receives significant taxpayer funds,” PMO spokesman Stephen Lecce wrote in an e-mail. “We believe they can operate within their existing budget.”
More Pavilions At Folkfest
h/t Larry
Renegade Regulator
Ms Pegeot to be Embedded with the Department of Justice
The Department of Justice is being very quiet about Ms Pegeot’s appointment, declining to acknowledge it on their website’s News pages (or anywhere else, for that matter). As for the DFO, RestoreCSA requested confirmation of Ms Pegeot’s appointment on November 19th. We wrote as follows:
“We received a tip […] that Ms Pegeot has been appointed to the Department of Justice, as noted below. This appears to be an internal DFO email advisory. Can you confirm that Ms Pegeot is moving to the Department of Justice?”
The DFO refused to respond to our question. In consequence, we have escalated our inquiries.
We noted this week in our federal filings that because “the Department of Justice is likely to be involved in these investigations [of CSA activity], it is highly improper that a senior leader of the CSA should be appointed as the Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister who will ultimately be responsible for investigating her.”
We Don’t Need No….
“The future of Whistler’s hydrogen fuel cell buses — the largest fleet in the world — is in doubt after BC Transit said it cannot afford to continue to run and maintain the fleet when the $89-million demonstration program wraps up next spring.
Information obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request by the Canadian Autoworkers’ Union 333 suggests Whistler’s 20 hydrogen fuel cell buses cost three times more for maintenance and fuel costs than the conventional Nova diesel buses they replaced in 2009.
BC Transit deployed the hydrogen bus fleet in 2009 as part of a grand scheme by Gordon Campbell’s Liberals to showcase fuel cell technology during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games and have a “hydrogen highway” stretching from Whistler to California.
That didn’t happen and hydrogen is now trucked from Quebec every 10 days, instead of from a hoped-for fuelling station in B.C.
h/t Exurban