The Canadian Reform Alliance Party? They were very aware of the multi-party system and were a merger to reduce division between the severe-right and the moderate right.

We have CRAP to thank for the modern Canadian Conservatives.

Some Westerners have extended family or cultural ties to dangerous places.

Also some of these kidnappings occurred when things were safer than now... When there's an outbreak of new crime, there's always people who are caught unaware before it becomes common knowledge to stay away. Some of these people have been captive for over a year.

I personally travelled to Iran and Eastern Turkey (when it was safer...) because I wanted to better understand the local culture. I learned a lot and I'm glad I did it. At the time it was when the U.S. had Iraq reasonably under control, Eastern Turkey was stable and Ahmadinijad was on his first term. It wasn't so bad, but... a few months later, things got crazy.

Today I would not go. But I wouldn't fault anyone who had family for going.

Shingles is not adult-chicken pox. Shingles is a remergence of the virus. Adults can get chickenpox. It's just that most have had chicken pox as children, or they're immunized.

You can only get shingles if you had chicken pox. It's far less likely to get shingles if you've been immunized to chicken pox.

This means that if you have a 'pox party' rather than immunizing, you're not only giving your child chicken pox, but they have a far greater likelihood of developing shingles later in life.

http://www.patient.co.uk/health/chickenpox-in-adults-and-teenagers

My girlfriend endured shingles, she was in agony for over a week and the symptoms are extremely different than chicken pox. She had chicken pox as a child.

If you're talking about Accutane, it cured me after 20 years of severe cystic acne.

Cured. No more drugs, no more blood on my shirts, could go swimming and even get my first massage.

Medical science is pretty clear about what they dont know. You always have to read carefully.

"Chicken Pox for adults is known as Shingles which is far nastier than Chicken Pox"

Wrong to an extreme.

Shingles is a resurgence of the virus which causes chicken pox. Once you get chicken pox, the virus is dormant in your body, your immune system continues to fight it. When your immune system is weakened, you get shingles.

Vaccination against chicken pox not only reduces chicken pox, but never being infected with the wild strain of chicken pox reduces the probability of contracting shingles when older:

" the risk of getting shingles from vaccine-strain VZV after chickenpox vaccination is much lower than getting shingles after natural infection with wild-type VZV" http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/vaccines/varicella/

+1, ... much more of a story than I remember.

It's blindingly obvious to me that animals are intelligent and should be treated with respect.

"we aren't talking about something that is passed down from mother to offspring, it's something taught in a lab."

umm. They do teach eachother. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loulis_(chimpanzee)

It wasn't his mother who taught him, she was used for medical testing. And he learned from other chips in a sanctuary, not the wild.

"...mature growth fixes more CO2 than new growth."

Only if your definition of "mature" is the peak-growth period of the trees and not a forest which has stopped growing.

Mature forests are as carbon neutral as an untapped oil deposit. Carbon release through decay balances with carbon capture from growth.

Using forests as a tool for carbon capture means either growing forests to maturity as carbon storage fields, or clearcutting new-growth forests and building permanent structures with a lot of wood, of course considerin the carbon-cost of processing the lumber and restoring soil nutrients.

Hardwood floors in shopping malls might be a good start.

I agree that mistakes happen, but failing because there wasn't enough content, or the content wasn't suitable to educate children with? That shows profound and fundamental incompetence.

Even if they ran a pilot and the teachers and students lied to the exec, or Pearson lied and failed to meet their contractual obligations, the exec is still on the hook. Investigations are important, but the outcome doesn't matter, if the exec delegates to incompetent underlings, they're ultimately responsible.

The exec who signed off on it should get the pink slip. Not the person in procurement.

If you don't understand the plan, don't sign off on it.

..."burger flipping ass has just banned you for daring to challenge me, you pompous PhD-wielding expert"...

Burger-flipping and PhD aren't mutually exclusive.

He's been asked by the Bolivian ambassador to call their president to apologize. This is certainly not a bad thing, and certainly not uncalled for.

It could be a good opportunity to repair relations with an ally.

"He's no uneducated, he's just anti-science."

I can't help but to read this in a Cletus accent.

I didn't mean to imply that it wasn't niche.

A good friend of mine attended a lot of Esparanto conventions. He met lots of Japanese people in the process.... but it's just one anecdote.