Oh no....
The Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper loves to watch Fox News. :(

"The Prime Minister said he stopped watching television news five years ago, noting that he’s just “too invested” in the issues and stories. He joked that he’ll even tell his children to turn down the television if the news is on and he’s within earshot.

Rather, he scans the front pages of the newspapers every morning and lets his staff brief him on the rest of the news. He does, however, watch American political talk shows on Sunday morning. The network he watches the most is, of course, Fox News. "
(source: Globe and Mail, "Bob Rae’s tumble buys PM time before piano showdown", Jane Taber December 16, 2010)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/bob-raes-tumble-buys-pm-time-before-piano-showdown/article1840240/

I wonder if there is a correlation between Stephen's stupid policies and his addiction to Fox "right wing propaganda brainwash" network.

Ugh. At least I can claim I didn't vote for him.

The only thing that corporations understand is profit loss.

I personally will send MC and Visa a message by not using my cards for the next 2 months (except for some small automatic bills already set up). I will do all my Xmas shopping via other payment forms (debit, and cash) even it will inconvenience me somewhat. I decided not to cut up my cards since its more work than necessary.

If enough people do this I think they will get the message. Even if I'm the only one that does it I at least have the satisfaction of knowing I reduced their bottom line by a real amount.

Personally I hope wikileaks survives and we get to find out about the "other" banking files. Truth is that transparency is always good for democracy. I suspect the real issue is more transparency will show that there's not much democracy left in the US (aka the senate and congress have been bought by the Military Industrial complex and a slew of other large corporations).

Maybe it will bring about change, although I doubt it. The US is in decline and corporations are already moving into a new corporate feudal state in China with a large captive market. All great empires fall (usually through corruption from the inside out).

Bad example. If a magazine published an article on how to get a bomb past airport security they would improve security. Why? How?
Simple their exposure of an obvious "security gap" would force the airport security to be improved.

Not knowing about a security hole and not telling anyone about it is not security.
It's a kin to someone writing about a hole in the airport fence that's hidden behind a bush.

Security through obscurity is not true security.

Similarly PCMags discussion of lime wire alternatives is simply pointing at the airport and telling you there are other holes in the fence that would need to be fixed (or in this cant be fixed).

The truth is that for the past 50 years the technology to distribute music to a large audience was not financially accessible to musicians and artists except through record labels. The technology has changed and the artificial lock that record labels had on artists is gone forever.

It's called disruptive innovation. Any business that does not innovate or compete through innovation will eventually experience it from a competitor (eg. Death of the walkman, the end of photographic film, horse and carriage, steam engines etc...) and if they don't have another way to make money they will go out of business.

So sad too bad... one more middle man cut out of the equation.

Its possible that the girl pressing charges "is" an agent ("CIA" other "friendly countries" government agency) with the primary mission of getting Assange in an akward position to smear his name and discredit him and wikileaks along with it.

Sleeping with someone is not necessarily outside of the call of duty in the intelligence service.

If the US will kidnap (arrests of convenience, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2982640.ece ) or assassinate ( http://www.brusselstribunal.org/IsraelDeathSquadsIraq.htm ) people they are more than willing to send someone to smear someone to discredit them.

If anything this attack on Assange validates the decision of other wikileaks participants for keeping their identities secret to protect themselves.

I don't know about you but I think its pretty courageous (probably bordering on stupid) to piss off the US government. Their reach extends almost anywhere in the world and they have the time and resources to turn your life into a living hell.

They are tracking my IP now... knock knock... oh oh.

There's a number of people that have turned old TV antennas into radio telescopes.

Here's an example:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Poor-Man-s-Radio-Telescope/

For more just google "DIY radio antenna"

There's even online stores that sell everything you need:

http://www.radioastronomysupplies.com/radio_astronomy_supplies.php

It could be an interesting project.

This is the delusion of the American neo-conservatives. The truth is he doesn't pay more taxes than the average American (or not significantly more so). It ties in perfectly with the "american dream": "If you work hard enough you to will be rich." (if you're an American and you're not rich yet it's your fault: you're just not working hard enough. It's not corporations and government (bought by said corporations) that are screwing you, you just have to work harder. Oh and don't forget to do as you're told and vote for your local neo-con, so he/she can go to Washington and can continue represent your local corporate interests.

The difference is his country is spending money on educating their citizens, rather than spending billions on subsidizing an entire military industrial complex. His country is also not spending billions on bailing out banks that squandered our money after lobbying the government to deregulate the banking industry, and then proceeding to prove why the original regulation was there in the first place.

My guess is that in his country voter participation is higher than 50% and that they vote for what is in their interest (not in corporate interests) likely his countries government isn't as bought because the politicians know that they'll get tossed out on their asses if they
don't listen to voters (who haven't been brain washed to vote against their best interests).

BTW Hint, hint: If you make an average middle class income or less, you get significantly more benefits (child care, education, health care, labour rights, etc...) in a social democracy then you pay in taxes, since most tax systems are generally progressive (aka the more you make the more you pay, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax ) . The Europeans have figured this out and are active voters and think for themselves (for the most part) which is why the have 35 hr work weeks, 6 weeks vacation, free health care and almost free education.

The wealth a society creates can be divided more evenly, rather than being concentrated in the hand of the few.

This training program only has some merit in the absence of free education for everyone, in that it offers those with little opportunity to begin with a faint hope clause.

Otherwise its just the start of a pyramid scheme. Aka we'll pay you a few dollars to bust your as and learn on your own --> then if we think your good enough we'll let you work for us for 80+ hrs / week --> after that "if you work hard enough you can become rich" --> most likely though we'll burn you out and throw you away like used toilet paper. After all we have an endless supply of new kids to feed to the "training mill". Sounds a lot like the "American Dream" (Scheme) recycled.

Bend over and we'll help you help us screw you for profit in exchange for faint hope.

Yes and the Toyota Prius has been around since err

1997.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prius)

and it was sold worldwide since 2001 (I'm assuming that includes the US).

If the US had technology companies run by engineers and technical people rather than lawyers and accountants perhaps they would chose
"innovation" over "litigation" as a business strategy.

The sad truth is that even if someone at GM or Ford had the same idea in 1997 or earlier the bean counters and lawyers would have axed a hybrid in favour of more profitable SUVs..

If you don't believe me look at who's on the board at GM, do a search for engineer in this article: (http://www.finchannel.com/news_flash/Oil_&_Auto/43476_New_Slate_of_GM_Board_of_Directors_Members_Selected_/)
funny... almost no engineers...

VS at Daimler: (http://www.daimler.com/dccom/0-5-7158-1-65184-1-0-0-0-0-0-8-7145-0-0-0-0-0-0-0.html)
4 out of 5 on the management board have engineering backgrounds..

Hmmm.

Stealing US ideas... what ideas? The idea to sue everybody... maybe I should patent "patent troll law suits" and sue all the patent lawyers (after all it is a "business process" and a "unique" invention)...

Denmark generates 19% of _ALL_ its electrical energy requirements using wind.
Spain and Portugal 9%, Germany 6%.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power)

The US has a total installed capacity of 695 GW ( http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/965_electric_energy_net_generation_and_installed.html )

25 GW wind / 695 GW installed = 3.5%

Incidentally 56% of the US's generating capacity is coal powered (can you say CO2 green house gases).

So the US produces 3.5% of its energy needs by wind, still behind Denmark 19%, Spain and Portugal 9%, ... and oh ya and Germany 6%.

If you want meaningful numbers you should look at energy consumption per person:

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_electricity_consumption)

You'll see the US consumes almost TWICE as much energy per person as Germany.

For environmental issues (like CO2 emissions) efficient energy use is at least as important as how you generate it.

The news here is not that the US is the biggest installed capacity, but the rapid growth of wind power. In Environmental terms both Germany and the US still only generate a small amount of their electricity by wind power (less than 10%).

So there's still a lot of work to be done to lessen the dependency on non renewable energy sources like coal etc...

Just my 2 cents.

but most people (not just nerds) could learn something in a course like this...

The truth is not just Nerds could use this type of a course, but other people as well.

In my own experience a course like this would have saved me a lot of painful learning after university when I entered the working world.

BTW they teach courses like this in business school too they just call them something fancier like "interpersonal management" instead of "social skills for nerds", and they are very popular courses.

There's interesting evidence to support that IQ is only an indicator of success up to a point. Once you have enough IQ points to make it into university a much stronger indicator of success is your Emotional Intelligence (ability to deal with people).

I used to mock the importance of EI skills (much like many of you posting here) because I didn't understand them myself and how to learn about EI. I was afraid of dealing with people and acknowledging that my EI skills needed improvement (although I didn't admit it to myself at the time).

It's a long road to learn how to behave and practice the skills, and requires a certain mindset. For me I just thought about it as how to "hack humans" (including myself) to get social interactions between me and the rest of the world to work better.

I started to read certain books, and started to acknowledge that if a social interaction didn't work out that maybe I needed to change my behavior (even if its to manage the other persons bad behavior).

Here are just a few books that I found interesting:

"People Watching", Desmond Morris
"How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships", Leil Lowndes
"Emotional Intelligence", Daniel Goleman
"Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis", Eric Berne
"Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without giving in", Roger Fisher and William Ury

There's many more and I cant remember all of them.

Then the other thing I did is to seek out environments where I could experiment by changing my behavior (be careful what you do at work though... it might not be the best place to start).

You can join a public speaking club, or any other social club where you meet normal people, pick something that interests you.

I found keeping a diary about any interactions that went badly was useful. It helped me recognize certain behavioral patterns I got stuck in or when people "pushed my buttons". That helped me understand what I needed to try changing next time.

Note: a lot of the changes I made didn't work, but I learned from them and through trial and error I learned what to do with different people. It's and iterative and often painful process, that you get better at the more you do it (not unlike programming ;) ).

What I've found with the "nerds" that have worked for me is that they fall into two categories (there's definitely not a normal distribution)

1) (about 20-40%) Those that have developed acceptable social skills and Emotional Intelligence to deal with other people and get what they want are usually happier, easier to work with and more likely to get promoted and be successful in their job (and keep their jobs). Often they end up being "translators" and team leads for less adapted individuals.

2) (the balance) those that are missing out on their true potential (often really smart guys) because they cant communicate to get the resources, support they need, or even to explain a good solution to a less technically gifted boss.
Mostly they are frustrated by what they cant do because of "dumb" colleagues or "dumb" bosses.

The reality is if you are smarter than your boss than you can learn the necessary EI on how to interact with him/her to manage the relationship. By getting better at communicating with your boss you can gain influence and get them to do what makes sense and also learn when to respect their answer and accept a "no" without taking it as a personal attack (sometimes their no makes sense in a different context).

If your trying to make your racing car win more often... it's often most effective to identify the biggest weakness and work on that rather than to work on your strength.

For example if you have a good engine (programing skills) but your cornering / steering sucks (communication), working on your engine will help on the straight sections, but will also help you drive off the track faster... unless you fix your steering first.

The other thing is you reach a point of diminishing returns if you just work on your strengths..

Do what you wish with this information... Ignore it, or act on it...

You're smart enough to know if what I said applies to you in some way (but think about it carefully ;) )...

People do not know enough about Islam, or Muslims, and they don't know enough Arabs in person...

Or about many other cultures other than their own.
And they do not know their history.

Human instinct is to be afraid of what you do not understand... a 10,000 years ago being curious and investigating the noise in bushes gets you eaten by the animal lurking there... running in terror at the slightest noise helped you're genes reproduce and survive.

The problem is that in the modern world these instincts aren't really appropriate any more (99.99 % of the time) and are being systematically exploited by people in power to feed and support a culture of fear and uncertainty.

We've seen this strategy in history again and again to use ignorance and instinctive fear to divide and conquer.

White against black, Christian against Muslim... whatever dividing lines you choose...

and while we are paralyzed with fear of each other the corporations and politicians do what they want.

They use the fear to justify taking away our basic rights in the name of security...

The truth is that with FREEDOM, comes RESPONSIBILITY and that the only difference between a police state and an open democratic society is the loss of YOUR rights. Neither are more secure against terrorists... (in fact the police state is already practicing terrorism against its own citizens).

I'm not afraid to travel to the US because of Muslim terrorists any more than I am of the plane I'm in getting struck by lightning...

Frankly US border officers or the idea of Armed Air Marshals and FBI officers with unlimited rights to arrest search etc scares me much more...

The reality is that extreme fanaticism (whether religious or otherwise) is usually a product of extreme poverty, lack of hope and/or desperation. Normal people with day jobs that can feed their families don't go strap explosives to themselves and blow up buildings or planes...

That is the real issue. If global hunger was eliminated and basic rights where there for everyone (including basic education) then fanatical cultures or religions would have a hard time finding anyone to follow their suicidal ideas.

This is a clear case of racial profiling and is just another sign of the lost rights of American citizens (in the name of security).

IASESTE Arranges work abroad expriences
and they can likely recommend study abroad programs

http://www.iaeste.org/network/index.html

They organize typically 4 month summer exchanges and have a large international presence.

If you're looking for a cost effective exchange check with your university career center and international center, many of them already have "exchange partners" with other universities including arrangements for little or no fees (you will still have to pay the cost of living, although many help with that too).

I suspect that the US will be among the most expensive destinations, look at other english speaking countries like, Canada, Australia, New Zealand etc... you don't have to go third world to make it affordable.