So, do you ever get an American quarter in your change and think "Sweet, an American quarter". Until you try to use it in a vending machine.

Well, the Canadian dollar is now trading at 94.109 cents US, according to xe.com. So an American quarter would get me... an extra 1.5 cents. And unless you're going to the States, you won't have anyplace to use it except as a substitute for a Canadian quarter, so meh...

In the brief bit back in 2007 when our dollar was trading above yours, it was hilarious to suddenly see people demanding to pay the American price at bookstores. They had never realized that they were getting screwed before then, even though you always could have taken the U.S. price and multiplied it by whatever the conversion ratio was at the moment and ALWAYS end up with something lower than the Canadian price. It was a pretty savage indictment of Canadian numeracy.

You make a good point about not being a jerk. Honestly, I have found that once one displays a marginal degree of deep knowledge about some subject but makes a mistake, there are no shortage of "experts" willing to jump in and humiliate the poor bastard. It's as though they're delighted to find an opponent worthy enough to fight but weak enough to defeat.

All that said, Eritrea was in the news a lot in the 80s and 90s owing to its independence war against Ethiopia. That war has a lot to do with the state of politics in the Horn of Africa ever since, and is sort of the model for the attempted secession of Somaliland from neighboring Somalia. I think the fact that the name of Eritrea is not well known is a travesty on the part of the media, and I think that anyone who regards themselves as well-informed on current events should feel embarrassment at not knowing the name of every current nation-state. There are a lot of them, sure, but knowing them is the price you pay for the title "well-informed".

Well at least Australia is doing better than Canada. Those poor sods drive on the wrong side *and* use the metric system on their roads.

And on top of that we have French as one of our official languages.

Nous sommes vraiment des moutons perdus!

Read my reply above, French lost because it was in the interest of many rich family at the time. That defeat was a CHOICE made at the highest levels, even if few know about it (this is NOT what is told to you at school...).

Yes, that's exactly it. Pétain and his clique and the French establishment were either ineffectual or on some level Fascist sycophants.

The classical narrative that the Americans love to tell, that the French were simply cowards, is just a joke. The French were either opposing the Germans (like de Gaulle) or on some level actively or passively pro-Fascist. The French surrender was not an act of cowardice by the French elite, but an act of betrayal of their comrades and of the other Allies. I don't think they expected to be treated as badly as they were under the Germans.

I simply don't believe that Pétain was a coward. A couple of years in to the occupation, the French fleet was still sitting motionless at Bourdeaux, not taking part in the war on either side. The Germans moved to seize it, and Pétain ordered it to be scuttled. He didn't have to do that, and if he was a coward he probably would have just handed it over, after all the Germans were pretty pissed and already had him in their power. He was a murky figure whose collaboration wandered far over the border into treason, but a coward he was not.

Of course, later when the Allies were on the upswing, there were no doubt many French people who hadn't minded the Germans when they came who were now happy to complain bitterly about their mistreatment under the occupation. But in that hypocrisy they're no different than most of us.

There were these two wars, can't remember what they were called, but they were pretty big, involved most of the world....ummm give me a sec I'll come up with it.

You know, Pétain was an idiot and the French government in 1940 was pretty hapless, so they don't need any bloody defending.

But it staggers me that Americans still mock the French for surrendering in 1940 when they weren't even in the bloody war yet.

We did it once, they made a trend out of that. Plus, we nearly executed the guy who did it, whereas prior to his treason he was a national hero.

Yes, prior to his treason. PRIOR. Do you know what that word means?

Or are you blaming the French for not reading Pétain's mind?

From the fact that in WWII, the leftist french gouvernment failed to command the french army, which in turn deeply loathed the gouvernment and just surrendered, citing missing orders from the politics.

Marshal Pétain was many things, but a leftist was not one of them.

Most steel ships are painted to prevent corrosion. Paint is a thermal insulator. Coating the inside of your heat transfer pipes with a thermal insulator is like masturbating with sandpaper - it might work, but it doesn't work well.

My kingdom for mod points...

One provides some sort of explanation and the other just avoids the question.

I agree with this, but not in the way you meant.

Look, I by my existence am not evidence, or at least if I am, you're going to have to tell me why. You suggest that I-as-evidence can be interpreted either way, in which case I deny that it is evidence.

Look, if we were at a crime scene, we could have a strong definition of evidence: (1) something that establishes guilt or innocence, or a weak one (2) anything relevant to the crime scene. The only kind of evidence I'm interested in is (1). If you allow (2) then the entire universe and all existence is evidence, which makes it utterly useless and wholly uninteresting in answering the question at hand.

Complex organization does not imply conscious creation. If you want, I suppose, you could see life itself as a very, very slow-acting "creator" on a colossal time scale, but any speculation what the consciousness of life "wants" and what its motives are is, well, excessively speculative. And it is not this kind of "creation" which is normally meant in these discussions.

Arguments for creation based on "irreducible complexity" or the like are all ultimately misunderstandings, deliberate or otherwise, of Darwinian adaptation and the laws of thermodynamics.

I deny the existence of an intelligent creator because I have no reason to believe one exists, just as I deny the existence of an invisible pink unicorn within the rings of Saturn. I cannot prove or disprove either claim, but I see no reason to engage in a rhetorical dance about a proposed hypothetical for which no conclusive evidence exists.

The primary argument against an intelligent creator is that, so far, it has been shown to be an extra hypothesis which is wholly unnecessary for understanding the material universe. In science we do not add extra hypotheses without good reason.

There is evidence of creation all around us and there is much evidence that can be plausibly linked to an intelligent creator.

I know of no evidence, none at all, that has ever been presented which has been clearly and objectively demonstrated to be evidence of an intelligent creator. If you believe there is, almost certainly you do not understand what you have seen or you have been misled, or both.

I say "almost certainly" because I recognize the unlikely possibility that you have information which most people who have examined this question do not. In the off chance you do, may I ask for examples of your "evidence of creation"?

For that matter, there's already the issue of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. This was added in the 1930's or so. I was Jewish when I was in grade school, but I'd certainly feel very uncomfortable today if I was asked to make that pledge -- I really see no reason it needs to be there.

It was added in 1954 at the behest of the Daughters of the American Revolution and the Knights of Columbus so that you Americans could distinguish yourselves from the fearful godless Communists on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

I'm not stupid enough to argue that cynicism towards politicians is unjustified... I would be disproven pretty fast:

• Stephen Harper has flipflopped on any number of things to retain power, like his Quebec policy, taxing income trusts, Senate appointments, etc.
• The Liberals have done the same (GST and NAFTA being only the most prominent examples) when they were in power and out.

• The NDP have never been in power federally, but Layton has found many excuses to change his position. He spent the last year savaging the Liberals for propping up Harper, then at the start of the latest little multi-party showdown said "Canadians don't want an election now" because he's scared of losing too many seats to the resurgent Liberals.

Pure cynicism is great because you will rarely, probably never, be proven wrong. Plus, you get this correctness without having to do anything hard, like do research on party positions.

The problem with cynicism is simply unproductive.

If you're think all politicians are untrustworthy lying scoundrels, you won't actually distinguish the biggest liars from the lesser. To quote Rick Mercer on his response to the cynic's argument against voting:

“And some people say they don't want to vote because they're just choosing between the lesser of two evils. Well if you don't choose the lesser of two evils then the greater of two evils might win. So not voting supports pure evil!”

If you're asking me for which party I support on issues of net neutrality and net wiretapping, I could just fling up my hands and say "well, none of them, because no matter what they say they might change their mind".

That's just the kind of cynicism I'm talking about. Because the NDP, at least, have consistently opposed these sorts of paternalistic controls, and Michael Geist's article indicates that the Liberals might be joining them.

I wouldn't be shocked to see one of these parties roll over—probably the Liberals—but it's not a certainty. And as long as it's not, I'm going to support them on this issue and not the party that is publicly calling for these controls.

Maybe I'm just Lucy calling for Charlie Brown to try kicking the football again... but unlike Lucy, as least as she appears to us, there is at least a chance that politicians will keep their promises. As as long as that chance exists we should measure it, do our research, and go with the politician that is likeliest to do what we want them to. That's hard and painful work, and means reading a lot of newspapers and reading a lot of media, but it's ultimately more profitable than simple cynicism.

I guarantee you the Liberals and NDP will back this up. No political party has a monopoly on the never ending quest for power.

Don't be so sure.

It's easy to say that a country with the longest boarder in the world has a population all within X amount of km's from the boarder. Thunder Bay is quite close to the boarder, but the communities surrounding it are still out in the middle of nowhere. I don't understand how the boarder automatically translates into high population density.

Fair enough... my father grew up quite close to the border in Manitoba but could hardly be said to be close to anything dense (even Winnipeg was far away). But my point was that the total land area of Canada, a huge part of which is the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, is a misleading impression of where the people are.

It is this sort ignorant mentality that makes the rest of Canada feel misrepresented. These communities are not "exceptional cases" but the people who live a modest life, and represent true Canadians. Just because a community doesn't adopt urban sprawl and clear cut everything in site does not justify writing it off in terms of policy. I grew up in Etobicoke and have been living up here for 5 years now.

But they are exceptional cases. Arguing they're "just the same" as Toronto is exactly the kind of mentality that gets them ignored, because the bigwigs in Toronto say "oh well, guess we're all the same" and fail to take into account the special conditions of non-urbanites.

I should make clear there is no stigma that should go with being "exceptional". All it means is what the word itself means: atypical, unusual, etc. which from a population-based perspective is simply true. Take it as a positive or negative if you want: I mean neither. There is nothing more or less "true" about this lifestyle, and I say this as someone with cousins in Brampton and Mississauga as well as Fort St. John, B.C.

Toronto is a polluted orgasm of suburbia and a perfect example of how not to populate an area. All the parks and trails back home I used to enjoy are now row housing.

Agreed! It's a hellscape: my mother lives in suburban Oakville (though I'm not from there originally) and there is literally nothing within a 3-km radius of her house but other completely identical houses. Nothing I said should be taken as some form of endorsement of urban sprawl, which I detest. My only point was that any plan for reaching out to people who don't live in cities must first acknowledge that they are not the usual case, that they require special accommodation. If you fail to do that, city folks won't recognize that they do have different needs.

As for electronic voting, I have objections to that that are basically independent of all this talk about population density. Aside from the obvious potential for voter fraud, I think it doesn't offer proper assurance to voters that their votes has been correctly handled, and there is a huge possibility for corruption on server side.

Remember the Diebold executive in 2004 who promised to "deliver the election for President Bush", and the strange correspondences between machine-voting breakdowns and Democratic-leaning precincts?

I think that the greatest potential for abuse is in those voting districts where most of the people are—in the cities—so I would seek to exclude such places from online voting. If you live close to a voting station, go there and vote. If you don't, only then should we think about loosening the rules a bit and using online voting. Otherwise (in my view) we're asking for trouble.

... my beef, if you bothered to read what I wrote, is that he says that the end user should be allowed to turn off password masking for applications such as banking/ATMs, which is totally stupid.

Dude, I understood what you said and what your beef was.

My point, which you apparently missed, was that you were mischaracterizing him by citing him as having argued for a default unmasked password entry mode. He did argue for an unmasked entry mode, but not as a default.