@cksos @sunlorrie Don't assume it will "inch better". See Somalia.
— katewerk (@katewerk) August 22, 2013
Racism’s One Way Street
Is a McDonald’s in Richmond, BC (the first one ever opened outside of the U.S. incidentally) the new hotbed of racism in Canada? According to some, it is. Charles Adler and Anthony Furey discuss the issue.
Personal Note: 2.7 km north of that McDonald’s my elderly [white] mother asked the [Asian] sales clerk what the function of a certain product was. There was no English or French label on it.
The young woman glared at my mom and said, “Why are you shopping here anyway?”
But such stories don’t get widely reported, do they?! 🙁 If my mother had filed a complaint with the BCHRT, do you think the laughter from them would have been louder than a jet engine?
This Is Awkward
The White House asked the Centers for Disease Control “to research the causes and prevention of gun violence.”
• “Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.”
• “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”
• One “body of research” (Kleck and Gertz, 1995) cited by the study found “estimated annual gun use for self-defense” to be “up to 2.5 million incidents, suggesting that self-defense can be an important crime deterrent.”
• “There is empirical evidence that gun turn-in programs are ineffective.”
h/t Kevn B
Reader Tips
Tonight, Calgary native Danny Nielsen hits the dance floor at a wedding for an impromptu tap-dance performance.
h/t Missy T
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Cam Broten Caption Contest
In keeping with NDP prospects in the province, a winner is not possible. However, a prize will go out to the caption judged 1st Runner-up.
(Note – my apologies for the double posting. If your caption was lost in the deletion, please repost it here.)
“When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”
The Missing Koch Report: Treasury won’t let the conservative donors see the results of an inspector general’s investigation.
Is There Nothing That Obama Can’t Do?
“Look, a puppy!“
Let’s Erect A Plaque At 787 Dundas St W To Remember Jack Layton
Olivia Chow Can’t Quite Put Her Finger on What’s Wrong With the Jack Layton Memorial Sculpture
More Pavilions At Folkfest
How do you say “push back” in French?
QMI Agency has learned the Parti Quebecois government plans to amend the Quebec charter of rights and freedoms and ban most religious signs and symbols from public institutions such as daycare centres, public schools, hospitals, clinics, and other government buildings.
Visible crosses, yarmulkes, hijabs, niqabs, burkas and turbans would all be banned.
According to sources close to the government, all health workers, public school teachers and public daycare workers would have to leave their religious symbols at home when they go to work.
The Unresolved Debate on Vancouver’s ‘Insite’ Facility
Yesterday morning, CKNW’s Bill Good, a longtime proponent of Vancouver’s ‘Insite’ program, had a discussion/debate with the Calgary Herald’s Licia Corbella. Corbella held her own very well but as the callers to the show proved, if you “dare” disagree with the official line about ‘Insite’ then many supporters of it will try to destroy your career or even threaten you with violence. You can listen to the entire discussion here or here.
Corbella is not alone in her belief that ‘Insite’ makes it all too easy for people to start using drugs or stay addicted to them. David Berner, a well known addictions counselor in Vancouver, very much agrees with her. The first part of the “Streets of Plenty” documentary that Corbella referred to can be viewed here.
Lights! Camera! Bloodbath!
Behind the scenes at a Muslim Brotherhood fauxtoshoot
The Adventures of “Government Check Dad!”
Heh, I crack me up.
Reader Tips
In tonight’s entertainment en route to the Tips sisters Mildred and Dolly Good, who performed and recorded under the name Girls of the Golden West, harmonize on the haunting old cowboy folk song Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.
The comments thread is open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Der Projekt
German warmists get a much needed shot in the foot as watermelon-helmeted lawmakers follow a plan drawn up by Rube Goldberg:
The German government is engaged in increasingly heated negotiations with energy companies in an effort to stop them closing carbon-emitting power plants which have been rendered unprofitable by the national renewables policies.
Inkompetenz macht frei.
h/t
Will Thomas Mulcair Follow Suit Regarding His French Citizenship?
Hah! In the States:
What Ted Cruz actually needs to do to renounce Canadian citizenship
Unfortunately for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, you can’t just say you renounce your Canadian citizenship…
As for Franco-Mulcair see 4 here. Then there was Franco-Stéphane Dion. At least a previous Governor General did the proper thing.
Not A Muslim
The Sound Of Settled Science
The universe may not be expanding after all;
The idea that the universe is unchanging – a constant backdrop that alters only with our parochial view of the heavens – was long ago consigned to the dustbin, thanks to the work of astronomers such as Edwin Hubble in the 1920s. […] the telescope revealed that most galaxies exhibit such a “red shift” – and, moreover, that the extent of the red shift became greater as the galaxies became more distant. The only conclusion was that the universe was expanding. From the point of view of the inhabitants of any one of its galaxies, it looked as if your neighbours were rushing away from you.
[…]
Now that conventional thinking has been turned on its head in a paper by Prof Christof Wetterich at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He points out that the tell-tale light emitted by atoms is also governed by the masses of their constituent particles, notably their electrons. The way these absorb and emit light would shift towards the blue part of the spectrum if atoms were to grow in mass, and to the red if they lost it.
h/t Carter
Blog Notes – Thank You!
Update: Thanks once again, to everyone who hit the tip jar in the past day. The support of readers here continues to amaze me, and you’ve helped ease some of the financial sting of losing my little road warrior. Your generosity is deeply appreciated – (as are the light hearted remarks in the comments thread).
On a more serious note, please take a few moments to think about what you would do in a similar situation. I have an evacuation plan as part and parcel of those long trips to dog shows – and it helped, especially when it came to getting the dogs we had with us out of their crates and to safety. The electric windows were inoperative, so getting vehicle doors open quickly was imperative. Luckily the water wasn’t too deep and the van only partially submerged.
(Original post continues below)
Things may be slow here for a day or two. We took an unexpected detour on the way home from a weekend fishing trip on Hwy20 south of Drake. No one was injured – outside of my dead, wet van.
As you might imagine, I have a lot on my plate in the next few days and blogging will have to take a back seat.
YNoKyoto
The day the Global Warming death spiral began
…something that caught my eye was the drop in mid 2011 (or precisely — July 29, 2011) when media stories fell by half, a step-change fall from which they never recovered.
Lots more at the link.