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Category: Changing the World

TLAM Math

Post Views: 6,598 Last night, as a response to Syria’s Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against its own civilian population, the United States of America hammered the launching airfield with a massive volley of Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles (TLAM)s. This was, in the words of the US government, a “proportional” response. Here is a bit of TLAM cruise-missile math for you. Each TLAM costs $1,600,000USD. The USA launched 59 from two warships. Let’s ignore the cost of the warships and the crew and the shore infrastructure required to get those two ships to launch position. Let’s focus on the cost of the missiles themselves. 59 x $1,600,000USD == $90,440,000 USD. Price of a plane ticket from Damascus to Seattle for 1 adult, economy class, $630 USD (Expedia).…

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About Bill C-23, “armed US border guards in Canada”

Post Views: 1,471 First, go read: https://openparliament.ca/bills/42-1/C-23/ … this process started with the CPC government. But even that doesn’t mean it’s automatically bad. If, as a Canadian, you have never travelled by air or train into the United States, the rhetoric around this bill about “armed American guards” on Canadian soil empowered to do “strip searches” can seem pretty outrageous. Here’s the thing … if you’ve ever flown out of Halifax, Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver on your way to the USA, you were already part of a similar set of rules. In fact, if you’ve ever traveled to the United States of America by car, you have voluntarily put yourself at the mercy of the exact same set of rules.  As soon as you set foot in US territory, you…

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From Pearl Harbor, to a Lack of Federal Voting Reform in Canada

Post Views: 879 First, A Bit of History Ok, so I know you think I am stretching here, but give me a chance to explain why voter reform was doomed by an event more than seventy-five years ago. On December 9th, 1941, Imperial Japan declared war on the United States of America. To this point, most historians will agree that the USA was maintaining a public neutral face(1 2 3) in the war in Europe, and the war in the Pacific. While the US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the danger the Axis powers represented, “…The American public was decidedly isolationist and antiwar. Memories of the expense of World War I — in lives and money — were still fresh. In 1934, Congress passed the Johnson Act, which…

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PM Trudeau’s White Elephant

Post Views: 508 So, Keystone XL will be PM Trudeau’s White Elephant gift from the USA. We literally cannot afford to say no … but we cannot afford to agree to it, either. As a result of a decade of systemic decline in the Canadian economy of almost everything -except- resource extraction, the nation had no “airbag” to soak the impact of a collapsing global oil market. For example, the lower Canadian dollar would have been a boon to our manufacturing sector … save that the manufacturing sector had atrophied in the previous decade.  This, in turn, did remarkable damage to the over all fiscal liquidity of the nation. To fix house that hasn’t had repairs in ten years, you have to go to the bank and get…

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Understanding “Billion With A ‘B’”

Post Views: 215 Arm Chair Economics 101 Let’s start with minimum wages As a Canadian that’s been watching our southern neighbour for three decades, I’d humbly submit that the ability to advance to the peak of one’s potential is the foundation of America. “Radicals” like Henry Ford understood that and put it into place. Actually, allow me to correct myself … it’s at the foundation of any functioning capitalist democracy. Poverty is a sign of sickness within the system. Bluntly, if you run a business and you want customers, folks have to have money. The fewer people with money to spend, means the smaller your market space is and the greater chance you’ll be out of business. If you want people to work for a living, the way…

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Re-thinking education

Post Views: 636 I want to have a talk with you about education. To have that talk, I need you to accept that a few people who are smarter than I am have noticed something is a bit … wrong Watch these videos, and then we’ll talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_build_a_school_in_the_cloud.html http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html  (some duplication from previous link, but still important) http://www.ted.com/talks/geoffrey_canada_our_failing_schools_enough_is_enough.html http://youtu.be/y_ZmM7zPLyI Heady stuff, yes? The issue as I see it is the habit of molding the student to the course material, instead of making the material suit the student. The Zombie Empire Replacement Part System continues to shamble along. Now I know that some folks think that asking a teacher to put together an individual teaching pamphlet for each student and attempting to implement it for a standard classroom of…

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