Seriously, everyone needs a shot of Bailey's (or if you're like me, Amaretto) in their coffee.

Well, that's your first problem. If you had said "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster", I would think you might understand.

Ordinarily there's little point in replying to an AC, but someone condescended to give you a mod point, so what the hell.

The idea that filtering news stories through political filters is to protect Canadians from bad information and those self centered, socialist scientists is, in a word, crap.

The Harper government has made it very clear - explicitly, actually, in government directives - that scientists who receive federal funding are not to the talk to the media without approval. This has been widely reported. They have cracked down hardest on environmental scientists (can't admit that companies are causing damage in the oil sands, shipping dangerous asbestos products, or damaging fisheries) and statisticians (you don't need data when you already know what policies you want to implement.) I'm sure you can think of other countries that have required their scientists to seek government approval before speaking.

It's a travesty, and one that any self respecting scientist sees for what it is - political manipulation to serve a cause that is neither left nor right wing, but corporatist and self-serving. Of course, you would realize this if you if you were actually a scientist.

During their last term, the Conservatives:

- were convicted of campaign finance fraud (the in-and-out scandal), using accounting tricks to funnel more money than allowed into critical campaigns,

- suspended parliament to kill an inquiry into the treatment of Afghan detainees,

- were found in contempt of parliament for refusing to disclose the cost of several big ticket items (including law & order programs, corporate tax cuts and purchasing fighters.) This is the first time a British style parliament anywhere has been found in contempt.

Then we had an election, and voted them back in, this time with a majority. So, yeah, they figure than pretty much get away with it.

Yeah, that's fair. Guess I was just unreasonably happy that it wasn't "the gays are ruining our marriages!" Or at least that it wasn't voiced.

Bah,sorry - eighties, not seventies. After a while all the decades start to blur together.

No, not forgotten. That Trudeau's name is mud here has nothing to do with whether or not his policies were good, though, and everything to do with how they were portrayed. You can get beat on the street for saying that the National Energy Policy was a good thing, but it was the only thing that kept our economy from crashing in the late seventies. That's a long conversation, though, and it's late. (I was a dyed in the wool Conservative at the time, wouldn't fuel up at a Petro Can. I think I was wrong.)

I miss the days we could have an honest disagreement about policy - cut corporate taxes? two-tiered health care? - rather than worrying about whether the governing party has any respect for parliament, the people or the constitution. God help me, I miss Mulroney.

I do understand the other parties didn't do themselves any favours. One thing that no one seems to be talking about is how poorly the Conservatives (federal and provincial) are managing the oil sands. Right now Ft. McMurray is a keg at a frat party, and we'll pay for every pint you drink. You *can* keep from being bled dry by multi-nationals, address environmental concerns and not crash the Alberta economy all at the same time. But we're dealing with sound bite politics, and Harper has hired some people that are very, very good at that.

I think Ignatief and Dion would both have been good Prime Ministers, but, no, they weren't electable. See other story today. And neither of them were capable of countering the campaign the Conservatives put forward.

I live in rural Alberta, so I'm dead in the Conservative heartland. I'm an hours drive from Stockwell Day's old stomping ground.

Talking to people during the last election, I heard two things: oil sands and economy. A lot of people in Alberta think that anyone other than the Conservatives will kill the oil sands and cost jobs, and that the only party that's strong on the economy is the Conservatives. They could prorogue parliament, insult vets, cut any program they felt like, and those two items would still trump it.

I was actually surprised how little ideology I ran into. It's the first election I've gone out and really engaged people to find out why they were voting Tory. People here like their big trucks, and they don't want to lose their big trucks, and everything else is secondary.

I have no idea what GTAs excuse was.

This is true, but the rate that things have accelerated at since last spring scares the living bejeezus out of me.

And where do I go to complain about US policies?

Some of us out here aren't terribly thrilled with the way America handles things that directly affect us.

(Let alone funding the whole Keystone Kops outfit)

Did the US stop throwing tantrums and start catching up on it's arrears at some point?

Either slashdot ate the link, or I boned it up. This is the source for the above quote.

Regarding the polar bear scientist Charles Monett, it seems to be one of those frothy bits that get people excited when someone who said something they didn't like gets the least bit of tarnish. An email from Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement Director Michael Bromwich states:

We are limited in what we can say about a pending investigation, but I can assure you that the decision had nothing to do with his scientific work, or anything relating to a five-year old journal article, as advocacy groups and the news media have incorrectly speculated. Nor is this a "witch hunt" to suppress the work of our many scientists and discourage them from speaking the truth. Quite the contrary. In this case, it was the result of new information on a separate subject brought to our attention very recently.

I'm sure we'll be hearing about how Monett falsified the polar bear study to further his own agenda for years to come, but at this point it doesn't seem to be the case.

I write PHP like Java or else I would have committed suicide years ago.

Oh, yeah. Me too. It seems like the PHP community is growing up a bit, too. I'm seeing a lot more cross-pollination from other languages, especially Java, when a few years ago there was almost a willfull ignorance when it came to good coding practice. The underlying language is still ugly as hell, but what's being done with it is getting better.

Thanks for the post.

I gave Unity the old college try on my workstation (and I do like it quite a bit on my netbook), but I ended up switching back to Gnome 2 for work. I did find that I was starting to change my habits (work with, not against), and much of it I liked. A couple of items (virtual desktops, single menu bar conflicting with focus-follows-mouse) made me switch back, but I'm about ready to try another run at it.

It's really easy to get so set in your ways that you can't find a more efficient way of doing things. If I'm honest, I still spend a good deal of time swearing at the classic menu approach to a desktop. I also still remember the revelation going from windows to (then) AfterStep. I'm about due for another UI boost.