Pretty much. Because each type of charge (positive and negative) repels like types of charges and attracts opposite types of charge, in order to get this type of attraction between two objects you need to cram a bunch of positives onto one object, and negatives onto the other. But those positives do not "want" to stay crammed onto the object - they don't "like" each other. Similarly for the negatives. If you get significant numbers of them together, they have a tendency to fly apart.

In contrast, "gravitational charges" (called "mass") are all the same type, and they all attract each other, so they easily clump together forming planets and suns, and continue to attract each other. Thus even though the electric force is in many ways "stronger" than the gravitational force (by something like 10^20), most of the time we don't even notice the electric force, while we do notice the force of gravity all the time - the earth is so huge.

Well, ICBC does not set rate based on age, just on driving record, so you might have been quoted the same rate as a new driver, but that rate is what any new driver would be quoted, no matter what age they were. With that said, I am pretty sure that they can include out-of-province driving records, as there are loads of hits in google searches with people posting how they needed to get letters from their ON insurers to prove various details about their previous driving history, and other responses from people who had no issues. It at least is possible that had you pursued it further you would have been able to get "credit" for your many years of claims-free driving.

I haven't lived in BC for quite some time, but the ICBC rate system does seem "fair" in that they classify drivers based solely (or is it just primarily?) on their driving history rather than on their demographics. The things one has at least some control of (ie your driving record) seems less arbitrary than your age, gender, etc. With that said, I don't know how ICBC deals with people who's history is from outside the province, but it seems reasonable to think they should be able to get historical data from other provinces.

http://www.icbc.com/autoplan/costs/premiums-set

In BC the car insurance is run by a government monopoly, so I guess it would be easier to pass them data. Having a well run single insurer is actually pretty efficient, as it lowers a lot of advertising and other overhead, but of course there are challenges in a system without competitive pressures to keep things in line, and a poorly run monopoly can be really terrible.

This is one of my favourite videos, a little short film explaining some things about an Arts NonProfit (a choral group):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0W59PDwFNM

That is a valid point, however there is still a huge difference between "real" property and "intellectual" property in that it is physically impossible in most cases for someone else to gain possession of the property unless the first individual looses possession of that property. Real property ownership laws are predicated on this physical reality. IP laws grew out of the desire to control movement of ideas for both political and financial reasons rather than out of physical considerations.

How is that related to arbitrarily deciding that limited time monopolies on the expression of an idea was a good idea? Ownership of physical items is a "natural" extension of the physical reality of physical items being unique - if I have a nifty stick, it is challenging for you to have that same stick at the same time. This is something that five-year-olds spend a lot of time grappling with - but most usually figure it out (though perhaps some of those at the top of the food chain perhaps could use some remedial lessons in sharing... but I digress).

Now, trying to explain to a five-year-old that once Pat makes up a new song, nobody else is allow to sing that new song for 75 or more years, is a bit more difficult.

But it has been shown time and time again that (a) test scores have uncertainties in their results by at the very least a few percent, so there is no justification in ranking a 91 ahead of an 88, for example, and (b) test scores are only loosely correlated with future success and overall abilities once beyond a certain minimum - the people with 75 are not significantly less successful than those with 90s. Filling the [SPECIALTY] slots based solely on test scores does all a huge disservice by filling those specialties with predominantly a single "type" of med-student. Much better would be to set some reasonable minimum criteria for inclusion in that specialty, and then randomly selecting candidates from that pool. If you MUST do some sort of ranking, have it impact the odds of selection only marginally (ie the top ranked student in the pool has twice the chance of selection of the bottom ranked student). De-emphasizing the idea of education as a competition between peers for a limited resource such as grades or spots should also serve to increase the emphasis on learning from and with the peer group and perhaps the importance of the knowledge itself rather than just as a means to advancement.

And I want a pony.

If you think about it for a while, you would realize that this should be the other way around (and may educational reforms try to get students and instructors on board with this also). The instructor time is the precious commodity that you should be trying to get the most value out of. The text is always available. If the student does the pre-reading they can come to class with an idea of what it is that they need the instructor's insight for, and can ask useful questions during the lecture and participate at a much higher level compared to if the lecture is their first exposure to the material.

There are entire fields of instructional practices based on this type of "just in time teaching", where the well prepared students attend classes unfocussed on the things they did not learn from the text.

http://www.google.com/search?q="just+in+time+teaching"

Read the text before the class and everything is confusing - but can become clear in class. Don't read the text before the class and everything in the class is new and there is much less opportunity to learn from the class in the ways that can best be accomplished in the class format.