I really do scratch my head. I honestly cannot fathom what it must be like to live in a society where if I break my leg or get seriously ill I might have to choose between treatment and paying the rent.

It only tops out at 10 billion if undeveloped countries continue to develop and other population trends continue. I saw this TED talk a while back, and what I didn't like about it is the sense of "Everything will magically work out, just relax and don't worry about it" it exhumed. The decline of population growth is relatively new, and has mostly come about by chance rather than any concentrated effort by humans. 40 years from now we could be back to uncontrolled growth again (maybe genetic designer babies will cause a worldwide boom). I think as nonrenewable resources become more scarce, the current population will start to seem more and more unmanageable.

But the rate of growth has been declining for many years, and much of today's growth is due to immigration. Canada's population growth rate is currently 1.2%. Two thirds of that is from immigration. So our local growth is 0.4% and falling. If current trends continue we will have negative local growth in a few decades. Immigration will keep us steady only as long as undeveloped countries stay undeveloped. :)
http://www4.hrsdc.gc.ca/.3ndic...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

It only legitimizes it if the competing conference is about something scientific. If the other conference is about something equally silly, it would serve to add to the aura of ridiculousness of the whole thing. Ideally it ends up looking something like this.

Probably the best form of protest would be to hold a Pastafarian convention next door. It would highlight that people can assemble and discuss whatever they want, no matter how ridiculous and pointless it may be. And refrain from throwing meatballs at the creationists.

Why does the US, with so many gun-toting civilians present to stop people from getting shot by other gun-toting civilians, have such a high gun-related murder rate?

Also if a bunch of average Joe's were up on parliament with guns out trying to kill the bad guy, they'd likely have been shot by the police responders...

Yep, because a single shooting proves every effort to reduce gun crime anywhere in Canada, ever, has failed completely.

And also regarding security, as soon as the news broke they locked down EVERY federal building in the city, not just the core. I am half way across the city from Parliament and I still cannot even leave the building to get food (lockdown at 10am, it's now 2pm), nor can anyone enter. They didn't even let those who were outside having a smoke back in. While this is certainly a reality check for us, sadly I foresee many billions of dollars being wasted on over-the-top security reactions in the near future - and it won't matter if it was politically motivated or not.

The security at most federal buildings in Ottawa is inadequate to handle this kind of threat. Do you think it's reasonable to post guards at every federal building? How many? With assault rifles? Parliament is also a public building (though the web site does indicate there are security scans - I admit I live here and have never been in it). And don't forget that the guy was taken out within sight of the main entrance by a swarm of both uniformed and non-uniformed guards.

The person who ran over the two in Montreal was already known to RCMP as a suspected radicalized individual. Fortunately we cannot arrest people based on their beliefs alone, he had to act or plan to act before he could be taken in. Unfortunately he apparently skipped the "planning" stage and went straight to running people down - he probably did it spur of the moment. I'm not sure how you could prevent that unless you jailed him just for reading jihadist material, or had an armed detail follow him around 24/7.

Personally, I'd love to see Netflix carry Têtes à claques

The CRTC doesn't need jurisdiction over Netflix to make them play ball. They already have jursidiction over the ISPs which deliver Netflix content to canadian consumers, and I'm sure they could easily make doing business in Canada more expensive for them. If Netflix was untouchable then they would not have bothered to show up to the hearings.

Unfortunately all you have to do is guess the first character correctly, at which point the phone will auto-correct to the correct password.

This gun already exists! Well... in an anime at least. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...