Hey, that confidence vote where it all came down to which way Independent (but former Conservative) MP Chuck Cadman was going to vote was exciting and so was the way Belinda Stronach dumped her boyfriend.
I realize too late I should have typed something like
Gone Gone
The form of Jean
Arise the Monarch
(something) Queen
I assume the collected works of Jack Kirby are required reading for American school children these days, like Will Eisner's work.
And all these people bleating about the minority government representing 'the will of the people' -- that's so not how it works.
It's the will of the people who matter, which would not include either degenerate Ontarian or degenerate Quebecker urbanites.
The Governor-General is essentially to the Queen [1] Billy Batson/Rick Jones to Captains Marvel. You get one or the other.
If that's too obscure, imagine Ms. Jean chanting
Gone, Gone
Form of Governor General
Arise the Monarch
Elizabeth
There was a World War Two commemoration where our GG appeared next to the Queen and I believe that this was a first.
1: Or king but the Dominion of Canada's monarch has generally been a woman. Given that the male monarchs managed to fit in a world war, a depression and another world war in the short time they were monarch, it's probably best to strike all male heirs off the list, or it would be if it didn't require a constitutional amendment.
49: I am running a poll to test your hypothesis and so far everyone is getting the wrong answer.
42: Nah, GrAnthony got dumped. McCain did the dumping.
In the Foobiverse, physically off-putting people are generally comic ethnics, noble cripples or villains. "McCain" is about as ethnic as haggis, so he better hope he's a noble cripple, the sort that gets to do stuff aside from sitting around being all noble and crippled and a credit to their kind of people. Otherwise he's stuck deep in Howard territory. Nobody wants to be a Howard.
Huh. Never thought of McCain as a Lynn Johnston character before but there's the pokey out tongue thing from For Better or For Worse.
57:
Uranus and Neptune also have atmospheres that are not in chemical equilibrium.
Looking at a world where the economy is probably going to be
tightening up for a while, I find myself drawn to things with deep
value, things a little less dependent on the state of our technology
and shipping infrastructure1 to build and repair.
Won't that make the economic crisis that much worse? It's all well
and fine to say "Well, I won't buy a new car every time I run out of
gas" but what of the unfortunates languishing on the assembly lines?
140: One thing that Clarke did very well in the Rama books
How much did Clarke have to do with the actual writing of the three
Rama sequels? I never finished the first one for reasons that might
most diplomatically be described as seeing Rama II as an
abomination (Although not to the extent of Benford's foray into
Clarke-fic, since I believe Lee actually read RwR) but most of the
other collaborations with Clarke that I have read have read more like
the fiction of the junior author than Clarke himself.
I don't know that there's anyone around right now who is preadapted to getting the tone of a Faux-Clarke right.
128:
If I can stoop to using his books as tea-leaves [1], it wouldn't
have particularly surprised me if Clarke was bi but perhaps somewhat
more interested in men than women.
1: The only explicit romances [2] that come to mind off-hand in
Clarke are the rather passionless grappling in A FALL OF MOONDUST, the
affair in SONGS OF DISTANT EARTH and the abusive triangle in IMPERIAL
EARTH. The last one seemed to me to be show more vividly than the first
two.
2: Which rules out those two guys in EARTHLIGHT.
87: Did you ever make over to Elmira for the Maple Syrup Festival
(which as it happens is one of my earliest memories from Canada)?
69: It's the Maple Syrup Rule. If someone is in some way notable in
a positive way and they have ever seen a bottle of Maple Syrup [1],
they count as Canadian.
Actually having been resident in Canada counts too.
1: Most maple syrup and all good maple syrup comes from Canada,
usually Quebec (Note that one of the conditions required for maple
syrup to be good is for it to have been produced in Canada and not some
unstable break-away nation).
39: "The Francophone Canadians all speak English."
For values of "all" equal to about forty percent.
"By June of 2009 we’ll have a new president. We’ll have a new congress. With any kind of luck the Department of Homeland Security will have been dissolved. Maybe Senator Leahy has bought us enough time that this security-theater insanity will miss us entirely"
Ten bucks Canadian says that even if by some fluke a Democratic candidate gets in, this doesn't happen and DHS is still around in 2012. Five bucks says that the dem will decide to show that they aren't weak by introducing some measure even more addle-brained than the Repugs proposed.
Isn't it time that people start reporting to DHS when they want to travel between US cities?
338: "Whatever signal you intend to send needs a bit of disambiguation."
Which is where the bitching comes in.
Bitching is one way of providing a vital feedback loop between the population and the government. It might be irritating to those who govern but it's arguably better than having the population occasionally explode into mass violence as a means of policy modification.
I've often said to other people on committees that while limiting the information that leaks out to the rank and file might buy some short-term peace, the long term consequences of cutting off communication might well involve an angry mob waving re-tasked agricultural tools and this is why I am not invited to serve on committees any more.
Not voting might be sending another signal, like "None of the people running (Or in the US, neither of the people running) are people I can vote for, even if I hold my nose." For example I would not vote for Michael Ignatieff if by some horrific calamity he ran in my riding since he is a whiny pro-torture two-faced Ukrainian-hating windsock who only came back to Canada from the US because his buddies were willing to parachute him into an innocent riding, but I can't see voting for the other parties who run candidates locally. I mean, vote NDP? [Eyeroll].
Noise, Hal Clement. It features Clements' take on nanotech, which he came up with about a generation before Drexler started thinking about small machines.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2008 | 15 |
| 2007 | 49 |
| 2005 | 9 |
| 2004 | 8 |
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