Small is still beautiful: Richest nations are among the smallest.

Facts aren't with the pessimists who say the world is run by the US, the EU, China, OPEC and giant corporations.  Little Iceland recovered because it broke with the EU and the ten richest nations on earth are some of the smallest as Daniel Hannan points out in the Telegraph:

"The wealthiest states on Earth, measured by per capita GDP, are Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Qatar, Switzerland, Macau, Australia, the UAE, Kuwait, Sweden, San Marino and Jersey".

If you use a different set of data for 2013, Canada is at #11 and the US at #7 but there's another half dozen tiny countries in the first twenty.   It's fair to say Canada is among the smallest by population.

Bigger doesn't mean better

Politics should be dirty if if can't be civil.

The market in favours and earmarks is essential to getting policy in place in a contrary world. Without predictable signals based on self-interest, there's no rule book to get obstinate people signing off on legislation. Saints, or even reasonable and civil people, can work things out, but in their absence, a little corruption is the right lubricant.  As the editor of Slate writes:

David Plotz, Slate.

"Excessive hygiene is rampant in Washington. ... If politics is the art of compromise, we have a huge number of elected officials who are not politicians at all but rather zealots animated by ideology".    And referring to the US: "Some political systems, such as the incorruptible and efficient Scandinavian ones, can thrive without “dirty hands.” But ours can’t."

I hate corruption but, David Plotz may be right. "Bullying, retaliation, back-scratching --Chris Christie was on to something".   And again, "Having renounced Satan and all his works, Christie has given up his ability to kneecap and to bribe".

Creative bribery is a little stymied in Canada because the head of the ruling party and the prime minister and the person who can veto your run for parliament are the same person.   There's less negotiation and more party line voting than in the US.  (Think of Michael Chong's bill.).  I'd rather more negotiation.

I've commented before that politicians should be able to get rich and famous for doing the right thing. Instead of a hidden and corrupt rule book, have an open and appealing rule book that advances good policy while making pols rich.  Double pay for MPs every year the budget is balanced.  (Your idea here).

The Singularity is here for Us, but not for You and Me

The New Yorker proposes a Turing test.  Picture a black box with you holding a smartphone inside.  A time traveler from a hundred years ago gets to ask questions to figure who is in the box.  He will conclude you are a new kind  of super human.  You can tell him the square root of pi, supply an Arabic translation of the Declaration of Independence, tell him when to watch for a comet, recite any passage from Shakespeare, and supply the name of the three best restaurants in walking distance of the Tour Eiffel.   In other words, Neumann's singularity will have been reached and breached.

Link to New Yorker story

The New Yorker goes on:  "How you answer the question of whether we are getting smarter depends on how you classify “we.”    As a teaser, they suggest that individually, a human one hundred years ago may have been more intelligent in some ways with better reading skills, a knowledge of Latin, better at doing arithmetic and with a longer attention span.   When you add internet and the smartphone link, collectively we are amazing and new.

The best decision you will make in 2014 is probably one you could have made in 2013

Those global warming publicists who were helicoptered from a tight spot in antarctic ice are still down by the south polar ice shelf on a naval vessel.  Meanwhile, the Akademic Shokalskiy from which they were saved, has reached New Zealand after the ice cleared away again as forecast. It makes me laugh but the lesson isn't about schadenfreude.   Good decisions are rarely rushed decisions.  If the south polar luminaries had taken a little longer view of things, they'd already be home.

As a kid growing up in the Ottawa Valley, I beavered away every March to force free icy slabs that buried our drive.  Two weeks later, the neighbour, who didn't share my compulsion, had a clear drive too.  The sun did a fine job and only my impatience created the work.

Unhurried and profound decisions come up quietly in life.  There is no fanfare or swelling of the fiddles in the background music.  The opportunity to move to a community with better job opportunities can be there for a decade.   The chance to marry well and prosper while also happy can sit under your nose for months and even years.  The gumption to change diet and lose twenty five pounds may save your life and there is no economic barrier to start.  There was no deadline to become a father but I found treasure with my arms about my baby daughter and her brothers before her.

The best decision you will make in 2014 is probably one you could have made in 2013,
but didn't.

The first white man

DNA shows the first white man is a modern individual scarcely dead ten thousand years.  The Out-of-Africa movements that brought Our Kind Of People were basic black.  A single mutation in gene SLC24A5 explains a third of the colour change. A second gene right next to it (A111T) is co-inherited and this one has been tracked back to a single individual from near the Middle East and India.  Modern man expanded into Europe and Asia about 40,000 years ago and it was much later that whiteness showed up, perhaps favouring people who could easily make vitamin D from the reduced sunlight available further north.

Solar Vortex Strikes West Coast

Victoria last night was 10C and Penticton at midnight was 6C.   West Coast bears up under onslaught of  warm weather and prepares for refugees from ROC.

If you'd like more perspective on the Polar Vortex stories of recent days, view this dynamic image showing a circum-polar system of which Canada's polar vortex is but one lobe. Link via Wattsupwiththat.  The original is an animation.

News from Outer Space: January 2014

The age of the universe has been pinned down to 1% accuracy ("baryon acoustic oscillations") says this article at the Daily Mail.  Last year's report of 13.82 billion years with a 2% accuracy is from Planck telescope data which is a slight adjustment for 2010's 13.75 billion years measurement.  When I was a kid, the guesses ranged from 10 to 20 billion years.  The universe, measured from the Big Bang, has only been around three times longer than our planet.  For fun, ask Google Voice or SIRI how old the universe is.


Unexplained hyper velocity stars have been discovered.  Earlier ones at 900 km/sec were spit-out lone survivors of a binary star that was being swallowed by a black hole at the centre of our galaxy.  Their path ignored the arms of our galaxy, fleeing the centre. The new ones are just as fast but no one knows what they are moving away from.

The 3D ghost of a dark matter filament has been detected.  The dark matter is still invisible but careful modelling of gravity-induced light warping in massive galaxy cluster MACS J0717.5+3745 using Hubble data reveals the filament.  There's even a rotating 3D model to watch, The model dates from 2012 .      Calling it "dark matter"is an inference.  Calling it a patterned light warp is observation.




A fireball from outside our solar system struck earth. Although rare they are seen from time to time.  There is a large rock in captivity that came from beyond the most remote comets and asteroids of our solar system.   Related: Last year a survey of meteorite samples came up with one that was probably dislodged from Mercury before landing here.

From Mercury

The fireball map attached for January 11th shows a possible extra-solar track running from 8 o'clock to 2 o'clock.  I can't find the one identified a couple weeks ago on the NASA fireball survey. From Spaceweather.com.

For general interest, a popular site lists 10 mystery objects in outer space.

The sun's magnetic field completed its flip at the midpoint of twenty-two-year sunspot cycle 24 on December 29th.  Nice little write-up at The Independent.

A major solar flare hit earth.  The probability of seeing Northern lights near the 49th parallel and south is posted daily in the left side bar at spaceweather.com.

December 2013 News from outer space here.

Phony US Unemployment Stats Revealed in Two Line Chart. Canadian Puzzle: How do you apply this?

Political stats attract lies like a cow-pie brings flies. Published EI stats (and CPI stats) are always misleading. Their aim is to persuade, not inform. The US chart shows the published unemployment rate has been declining but the whole time the percent of people out of work has stayed flat and high. Canadian numbers say the same on a smaller scale.  The unemployment rate has gone down but fewer able people are working. We are less discouraged since only half as many people have dropped out percentage-wise.

US numbers from thefederalist.com with hat tip to Instapundit.

A reminder, stats are slippery.  The partisans who put a spin on a story know what they don't want you to think about but probably don't understand the economy either.  The participation rate is seasonal.  The size of the potential work-force changes with births, immigration, death and retirement and even rules about pensions.  When couples prosper, dropping out can be win-win for  wife and husband.  It's regional and varies from rural to urban areas too.  Robots may be a better deal than talented willing workers. And so on.  When I see a simple number, I want to see how to drill down for detail.

Canadian participation is seasonal.

Canadian participation quarterly.

Canadian unemployment with both a seasonal and a regional tweak.

Underlying data for US chart above.

For detailed interpreting of employment stats, see Mish Shedlock at Globaleconomicanalysis.

"A couple of centuries ago, every kid was breastfed and ate organic food. Most of ‘em died".

The title is from Instapundit's link to a repentant anti-vaccine lady.  As she herself says, "I had the healthiest childhood imaginable. And yet I was sick all the time".    Despite her tale of pure green lefty locavore living,  common sense prevails.  Her daughter is vaccinated.

Amy Parker

"I want the anti-vaxxers to see that knowingly exposing your child to illness is cruel. ...
If you think your child’s immune system is strong enough to fight off vaccine-preventable diseases, then it’s strong enough to fight off the tiny amounts of dead or weakened pathogens present in any of the vaccines.
And from before:
I understand, to a point, where the anti-vaccine parents are coming from. Back in the ’90s, when I was a concerned, 19-year-old mother, frightened by the world I was bringing my child into, I was studying homeopathy, herbalism, and aromatherapy; I believed in angels, witchcraft, clairvoyants, crop circles, aliens at Nazca, giant ginger mariners spreading their knowledge to the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Egyptians, and that I was somehow personally blessed by the Holy Spirit with healing abilities".   (Link at Slate).

Some Body Cells Form Intranets - Touching Each Other at Great Distance

Ordinary cells, not just nerve cells, link up with each other over great distances and trade information. Tiny filaments reach out fifty to a hundred cells distant and exchange protein signals.  The filaments called cytonemes are so delicate they went unseen for decades.  People, unaware of these communication bridges, assumed chemicals leached out of cells and drifted around until they bumped into receptors.  The truth is some cells target each other at a distance (like friends on Facebook).

Kornberg

Research reported by Thomas B. Kornberg, PhD, a professor of biochemistry with the UCSF Cardiovascular Research Institute, January 2, 2014 in Science. Story summarized at Science Daily News.

Live-cell fluorescence image of acytoneme emanating from a small clone of cells that express a membrane-tethered form of Green Fluorescence Protein. This cytoneme extends toward cells in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc that express Decapentaplegic, a morphogen signaling protein. (Wikipedia)

SIngle Payer: Democrats will double down, not back down, in 2014.

In 2014, the Elect on the Left are going to double down for "MORE" not "Less" as the train wreck of Affordable Care insurance hits Americans.  Instead of learning from error and saying "Sorry", expect SINGLE PAYER to be the brass balls mantra.   Republicans and Libertarians who look forward in 2014 to delivering a come-uppance at the ballot box underestimate the voters' readiness to fall for the line, "We shouldn't have compromised". Like others who make excuse that true Communism or true Christianity has never been tried, the radical left in ascendancy will claim True Health Care for the Poor and Sick has never been tried.  Gentle Reader, prepare for that sinking chill in your stomach as you read stories you thought no one would have the brass balls to write -- that the Affordable Health Care act didn't go far enough... that all the teething problems of the ACA are caused by recalcitrant Republicans who held up progress.

ACA aka Oobleck

Dr Seuss created the character of King Didymus who called for Oobleck and when it came and proved a disaster, reluctantly said "Sorry" and spared his people.  You should hope Sebelius or Obama have such a heart.

The reality is closer to the oblivious biker in Hunter Thompson's "Hell's Angels" who almost died swallowing a tsunami of unknown drugs. Two weeks later, instead of learning wisdom from his folly, he said:  "The incident had taught him a valuablelesson: he no longer had to worry about what kind of pills he ate, because his body could handle anything he put into it".    That will be the struggle in 2014, to refute the voices in the Democrat party who double down instead of back down.

A little Icing on the Warmist Cake.

I see four under-reported facts about the climate propaganda ship stuck in Antarctic ice. (The Russian vessel, Akademic Shokalskiy)

One:  Plunging temperatures didn't lock up the ship.  It was wind that blew breaking-up shore ice into position combined with delays for sightseeing.   Both the ice and the weather were in the forecast. (Wattsupwiththat).  In depth coverage including a diary at the link.
Two: Almost all mainstream stories about the rescue leave out WHY the ship was there, to document the extent of ice melt.   Reporters won't let got of their climate talking points. (Proverbs 26:11  As a dog returns to its vomit, so fools return to their folly).
Three:  They weren't in danger. Only the paying passengers were given a helicopter ride off the vessel.  The Russian crew stayed behind to wait for the ice to shift in a couple weeks.
Four:  The US Navy is NOT part of this story.  A Chinese vessel was closest followed by an Australian icebreaker that did the helicopter lift from the Russian boat.  The Jade Rabbit lunar rover arrived on the moon's surface just three weeks ago.  There's a pattern here.

UPDATE: US Coast Guard will send Polar Star Icebreaker in response to Australia's request. Jan 4th

Hue Long, China

Aurora Australis, Australia

Toronto losing notoriety: De Blasio bumps Ford from news cycle.

New York's new mayor, when asked what he was wearing to keep warm, offered to strip, "Do you want me to go further?", while a couple dozen reporters looked at each other in disbelief. That's his fourth day in office.  Plus outlawing carriage rides in Central Park, "for the horses".Despite Rob Ford's noble effort to stay on top of the news cycle, four days into a four year term, it looks like New York's mayor will be at the top of the outrage cycle for some time. The tone of the inauguration was mostly "graceless and smug" says the NYT.  "Plantation", "inequality", and ACORN-love got the high five.   Bill is "an unrepentant supporter of ACORN and Occupy Wall Street".  ACORN accepts credit for getting him in office.  "We're baaack" as Bertha Lewis said.

He'll probably help reduce the number of Democrats in the Senate and the White House by being a high-profile failure with hard left branding.  Front Page Mazagine summarizes:

"When they put de Blasio in Gracie Mansion, New Yorkers opted for socialist chaos and decline — and that’s exactly what they’re going to get".

Remember when Mayor Bloomberg was the Nanny State guy who banned Big Gulps?  Those were the good days.  The people have spoken.

A notorious Rob Ford will do more for Toronto than a Wilhelm-De-Blasio on his best behaviour could ever do for New York.

Peace on Earth - Increasing.

Strategy Page does, what the newspapers don't,  the annual round up of all wars on earth and finds again that they are decreasing.  The short version:

The Great Nuclear Truce continues.  Most current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies...   Many small wars are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism and other forms of radical socialism), that still resonate among people who don't know about the dismal track records of these creeds. Iran has replaced some of the lost Soviet terrorist support effort. That keeps Hezbollah, Hamas, and a few smaller groups going, and that's it. Terrorists in general miss the Soviets, who really knew how to treat bad boys right.

Deaths in Mexico justify calling that a war.The intro is followed with a nation by nation summary.

China: Enemy of our Enemy. UPDATE

China was with "the gooks" for the Korean War. The news you haven't read is that North Korea has threatened to turn its nukes towards China.  And China is cutting the ingrates loose.  Their number one trading contact with North Korea was Kim Jong Un's uncle.  Jang Song Thaek, the #2 man in Korea, along with five aides, was fed alive to dogs on December 12th in front of Kim and 300 nervously watching officials.  The gloves have come off, first with an article in China's official organ in Hong Kong revealing the atrocity and a follow-up calling for an end to coddling North Korea.  Also, on December 13th, China got in touch with Russia's foreign minister and sent an ambassador express to Moscow.  These are North Korea's two alien neighbours.  China is giving up on influencing the Kim John Un regime.

From The Straits Times article (h/t barrelstrength):

When the son, Kim Jong Il, took over the helm, he did not hide the fact that his nuclear weapons could be used against China.Dr Xue Litai, a research fellow at Stanford University's Centre for International Security and Cooperation at the time, disclosed that he received further confirmation from an American source who accompanied former US president Bill Clinton in his visit to Pyongyang in 2009. According to the source, a North Korean senior official told Mr Clinton that their nuclear weapons could not reach the US but could be "pointed West" in the direction of the Chinese mainland.

UPDATE: Maybe no atrocity after all. Just a simple tyrannical execution.  Rest of the story stands.

How does Obama find time to golf?

The American president follows at least a dozen  hour-long TV shows and is working his way through all of Breaking Bad.  How does he find time to golf?  The Newsbuster story lists Mad Men, House of Cards, Homeland, Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, Downton Abbey, The Wire, Real Housewives, Glee, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation and SportsCenter.  Did I mention he follows basketball?

I'm not a busy guy but couldn't find the time to do it.

Jarrett seems to be minding the store but as CEO's say, when they visit the White House, they talk to people they wouldn't hire.

Obama isn't a couch potato

but...

Body map of emotions in color. What do love and pride look like?

Fourteen emotions are mapped in color onto the body.   Each has a distinct pattern showing parts that feel good and parts that feel bad.  Not unexpectedly, Love and Happiness are similar except in the groin but would you predict that Surprise and Shame are almost a match?

The sample size is 700 and the measurements are from self-description, not physical measurement, so there is a heavy subjective factor.  But it rings true.  This confirms to me the idea that dogs can smell our emotions since hormones and temperatures in different parts of the body are changing.

Published on 31 December, 2013 in the scientific journal Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences, reported at Science Daily News.

150 years ago today Republicans freed the slaves and rejoiced.

The Emancipation Proclamation came into effect today, one hundred and fifty years ago.  Democrats were outraged, calling it "an outrage of all constitutional law, all human justice, all Christian feeling" and “a proposal for the butchery of women and children.” How did this get turned around to make Republicans the bad guys?  Report at Gateway Pundit.

The proclamation was a wartime executive order from Abraham Lincoln, didn't apply to the five non-rebel slave owner states, didn't make slavery illegal in itself and applied to Confederate held lands, not to Yankee lands!  It did however confirm the freedom of ex-slaves , offered them a chance to join the army, and became a framework for the actual outlawing of slavery three years later.

Amended:  151 years ago.

Grey Lady has Chinese Suitor. "There's nothing that can't be bought for the right price".

In 2009 the New York Times took a quarter billion loan from Mexican investor, Carlos Slim Helu, and made promises. Now "Low Carbon" Chen Guangbiao claims he plans to buy The Grey Lady in a hostile takeover. The story is at China Digital Times.  If he can't get the package, he'll go for a major stake and sees golden renmimbi in re-opening the Chinese Market to the NYT.   “There’s nothing that can’t be bought for the right price,” Chen told Reuters.  

Quickie DNA tests not ready for prime time.

Kira Peikoff of the NYT paid for three different quickie DNA tests to see what diseases she was at risk for.  What she learned is that the tests are poorly calibrated and can contradict each other.  She's faulting the interpretation, not the testing.

23andMe

Only a few genetic markers are sampled (equivalent to "reading the first letter of every second page" in a book) and different ones are relied on for estimating the same disease. There are only a couple dozen rather rare diseases that can be predicted well. The data base used for estimating is still very small and even if you could afford a whole genome analysis, the technician wouldn't really know what to compare it with. This situation may improve dramatically in the near future.  Meanwhile, as the doctor Kira spoke with afterwards advises, “If you want to spend money wisely to protect your health and you have a few hundred dollars, buy a scale, stand on it, and act accordingly.”

Affordable technology

The Maple Leaf at Half Mast

Flag designer, J.R. Mattheson, passed away at 96.  Kathy Shaidle writes, "Canada's Maple Leaf is one of the most readily recognizable flags on earth".   

Despite the classy design, I still feel bitter about 1964 and Pearson's flag initiative.  The borders should be blue.   Blue for the oceans in our national motto.  Blue for the Fleur-de-Lis.  Blue for the old red-white-and-blue Union Jack.  That was the first time I noticed lefty politics overtaking common sense.  Red then meant communism, revolution, and blood. It displaced the blues of our history, and the blue of a dominion that runs from sea even unto sea.

(A testimonial to John Mattheson here.)

How to start a small business in California

h/t smalldeadanimals
linking to original-republican.com

New Putin Editorial - Fake but Accurate

Breitbart sucked in its readers with a new Op-Ed editorial from Vladimir Putin.  Unlike the September NYT Op-Ed,  this one's a fake.  But accurate.  Russian satire sounds better than American truth.

Christians are much better off in pro-Russia Syria than in post-American Iraq.

All these years, the Americans have been lecturing us Russians about “human rights” in Chechnya. So it served them right when two Chechyans killed and wounded all those people in Boston; we had tried to warn them about the Tsarnaevs, but of course, the Americans thought they knew best. Here’s what’s best: America and Israel ought to join with Russia to squelch these Islamists.

There’s a deeper point that I wish to make, concerning the fate of nations, and of civilizations. And that point is: You need conservatism, including religion and patriotism, in order to govern. This point is not optional; it’s a necessity.

Privacy is toast

Today's clever devices are one app away from making you a voyeur.  A few more tweaks, a few databases unlocked and you will walk along a street knowing who lives in the houses and their daughter's birthday, their voting habits and credit card spending. As you meet people, their faces will be decoded and matched to names, the car they drive, their credit rating and criminal record and their favourite purchases at Amazon and The Bay.

This information is there already. Some of it like licence plate registration, VISA spending and criminal records are behind firewalls. Much of it, thanks to Google, is in front of firewalls.  Are you ready?  There have been massive thefts of identify information ( 40 million cards at Target stores this week) and climate emails (Climategate database now on line) and NSA surveillance data  ( Snowden, selectively released).    At some point, a lot of this is going to jump into the public domain and be swept up by your smarphone.

Really, who is ready for this?

True personal privacy is a trade-off.  Some will opt to live in a dynamic web in public view and some will have traditional privacy in the backwaters of life.

And this just in:  http://pjmedia.com/blog/data-brokers-gathering-dossiers-on-millions-of-americans-by-income-disease-and-more/

Homo Sapiens is a comic misnomer

"Sapiens" , the Wise One, is a comic misnomer for man.  A glance around Canada and the globe this Christmas season will confirm it.  We used common sense to name other species of hominid but are blindly self-congratulatory choosing our own name.  If there had been an adult around, they might have picked a more distinctive name like The Ape with the Big Dink.  (As Instapundit puts it, attracting chicks can explain why the Sapiens phallus is about double the size of the nearest ape competitor,)  A more modest name that recognizes we have some skills has already been used. Homo Habilis.   Habilis=skilful, suitably nimble

If you wish to pursue the Big Dink topic.  Wikipedia: Penis Size

Source page.

Ultrasound restores blood flow after stroke.

"ClotBust" and other ultrasound tools being tested can break up blood clots in the brain after a stroke.  The Popular Mechanics story gives hope these tools will soon be available.  ClotBust and EkoSonic fire ultrasound from many directions to super-activate the clot-dissolving drug tPa
when it arrives at a clot site.  A third tool, ExAblate Neuro relies on ultrasound alone, converging from thousands of directions to zap the clot directly.  A 40% clear-up rate is being reported for ClotBust in the first couple hours after application.

Best Obamacare repeal zinger

We have to repeal Obamacare

to stop finding out what's in it.

This is the antidote to Pelosi's poison pill:

“We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it.”

The zinger is not my own but a Google search failed to bring up the author.  Let me know if you find the source.

Map your talk: NYT questionnaire predicts where you live by what you say.

Hard to resist finding out if the test is accurate.  Crayfish, crawfish or crawdad? As a bonus, after each question, a map displays where each option is most spoken.  Some of us have moved far from our birthplace and are harder to place.  Click here and see for yourself.

Voters are a food source that parties feed upon.

You're never going to win them all and rarely a majority of votes cast.  It's human nature you're up against. The maternity ward is full of future NDP, Liberal, Green and Conservative voters.  A majority of those little cuties will end up voting opposite to your sons and daughters.  Elections are not a scientific  test to determine the best policy for defence, money, security of the person, charity and markets.  If you want policies that work, look to the Fraser Institute:  "A free and prosperous world through choice, markets and responsibility". If you want to win elections,  you win votes.  Elections are about votes.  Votes are just votes.  To govern you must win a share of votes from citizens who deeply disagree with your beliefs.

Voters are a food source that parties feed upon.    They cluster around values like "treat everybody the same|"  "Keep my town safe"   "Don't forget the poor and the orphans"  "Let me raise my family my way"   "Don't lie to me"    "Waste not want not"  "There ought to be a law"  "Got to break a few eggs to make an omelette"  and on and on.

   The parties have "bi-polar disorder" and try to line up along a single left-to-right axis. The voters are all over the place and the winning party harvests the most.  Stephen Harper has been good at this. Some of his supporters grumble but the larger group of people who don't support him, includes many who grudgingly say they can live with his policy.  The result has been a better Canada.

Beetle Pine Kill in BC of historic proportions - See map

This is a screen-shot. Original zooms to high definition.
Red catches your eye but GREY is the kill zone with 70-100% pine tree kill. Only bright green pine forests are still healthy.

Mills are running out of fibre because the dead wood with blue stains and holes can't be marketed for long.  I picture a forest fire cataclysm in the offing with standing and fallen deadwood everywhere.  On the other hand, needles fall from the dead trees and compost rapidly so there is less explosively flammable material in the forest.

Remember when Canada had the world's third largest navy?

Canada had the third largest navy and the fourth largest air force on earth coming out of World War II.   NextBigFuture writes:  "Diefenbaker agreed to stop making major weapons in 1959 and wound down Canada's military from 5% of GDP to about 2% of GDP over 6 years".  At the same time we outsourced most military tasks to the US with NORAD, purchase of Bomarc missiles, and cancellation of the Avro Arrow.

I don't miss the military might and prefer the lower GDP figure but there's no free lunch if we want to target a secure presence in the arctic.  We've handled a larger budget before.

The chart compares military spending for US and Canada as a percentage of GDP.  Note that the percentage climbed after the war before declining.


And a little teaser:  British Columbia had Canada's only submarine in 1917,HMCS CC-1. With this and one other ship as our sole west coast defence in World War I, guess to whom Britain subcontracted our naval protection?  The Imperial Japanese Navy's North American Task Force. This was before Pearl Harbour.

BC's submarine, HMCS CC-1   1917

Red-Nosed Rudolph: Conservative Icon.

Red-nosed Rudolph could have taken his case to the Ontario Human Rights Commission, but he didn't. Blatant bullying wasn't made an excuse.

His skills were out of fashion with the opinion makers who systematically mocked and discriminated. Rudolph's solution was to get a job and gain respect through service and merit.   The fickle press  (for such the reindeer who blab about "making history" appear to be), flipped like a wind sock when the big guy gave Rudolph the status that they envied.  The lesson is firstly to be patient, relying on skills and merit to advance in life.  The second is don't expect fair treatment from the press unless they are reporting football scores.

Jealous of Rudolf, some of the reindeer hatch a plan to get rid of him

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.,
But do you recall?
The most famous reindeer of all?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Had a very shiny nose,
And if you ever saw it,
You would even say it glows. Like a light bulb!
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names;
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games.

Then one foggy Christmas Eve,
Santa came to say,
Rudolph with your nose so bright,
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?
Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee,
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,
You'll go down in history.