HST in Ontario

I had a brief scare today when I glimpsed an article saying the 13% Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) in Ontario kicks in tomorrow, 1 May 2010.

Fortunately, I was mistaken -- the article was talking about how consumers can avoid the provincial portion of the HST for some services by pre-paying prior to 1 May 2010.

Ontario's cash-grab is still slated for 1 July 2010. Whew. Small favours, eh?

One of the more ludicrous arguments I've heard in favour of the HST is that the billions of dollars businesses will save will be passed on to consumers in the form of lower prices. Call me cynical, but I marvel at the amount of pixie dust I'd have to inhale to believe that.

If the past decade and more has shown me anything, it's that the trickle-down theory of wealth is a semi-trailer load of insert-scatological-epithet-here for the vast majority of consumers.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer -- an overworked phrase, but it's overworked because it's still true.

Perhaps politicians should give the trickle-up theory a turn. It couldn't do much worse.

Bush Endorses McCain-Palin

Tina Fey does a brilliant Palin impersonation (visit the NBC/Saturday Night Live website for more Fey-as-Palin videos); what I didn't know is that Will Farell does a pretty good impression of Bush.

U.S. 3rd Presidential Debate

Tonight was the third and last U.S. Presidential debate between Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, moderated by Bob Shieffer from CBS.

Random thoughts:

• Much of the camera work was a split screen so you could see both nominees at the same time. While Obama was talking, McCain looked very stiff and only slightly creepy -- but that may partly be due to old injuries.
• Shieffer did okay, I guess.
  
• Obama performed well, again. Very presidential and calm.
• McCain appears more energetic than in previous debates.
  
• Because Obama is leading the race by at least a 6-7 point margin, McCain had to out-perform Obama to win the debate. I don't think that happened. At best it was a tie, and a tie is good for Obama. Besides, if you ignore issues, I think Obama did slightly better than McCain.
• I was cringing when McCain was spewing about Ayers. Guilt by association -- it reminds me of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.
• McCain... please don't smile or laugh on television. Grin, chuckle... perfectly fine. And I know it's not your fault, nor do I place any fault. But your smile looks like a rictus. It puts you in a bad light. So please.
  
• ACORN? Currently I find it extremely difficult to believe ACORN is fomenting wide-scale voter fraud, given what I've read and given that claims of voter fraud is a typical Republican tactic to disenfranchise voters who mostly vote Democratic. As Obama said, ACORN pays individuals to collect voter registration information. Some individuals are stupid and break the law; that doesn't tar and feather an entire organization. That's like saying because one high-schooler plays hookey all the other students do, too.
• What scares me is the thought that McCain really believes Palin is qualified to be President of the United States. What scares me is the thought that McCain really believes his own lies. And if so, what does that say about his judgment?
  
• And what the $%^&@! is it with this false equivalancy!?! How can McCain calling Obama a terrorist be equivalent to Obama calling McCain erratic? How is McCain calling Obama a traitor equivalent to Obama saying McCain is lying? I really wish people ie. the media, would start calling McCain on it.

U.S. Presidential Debate: Town Hall

Tonight was the second of three United States Presidential debates between Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain. Tonight's was in a "Town Hall" format moderated by Tom Brokaw (NBC).

I came into this second debate planning to watch the entire 90 minutes. You know what? I turned off the television after 10 minutes. This debate was miserable. Miserable enough within the first ten minutes that I turned it off.

Was it the "Town Hall" format (with questions from the audience and online; 2 minute answers, 1 minute follow-ups) that turned this debate in to torture? Compared to the format in the first debate tonight's was pitiful.

Random thoughts, given that I turned off the t.v. after ten:

• I groaned -- painfully -- when Brokaw recited a submitted question and then immediately added his own question on top of it. Hey, Tom. Kind of defeats the purpose of this type of format, doesn't it?
• It's hard for me to describe, but Brokaw rubs me the wrong way. Something about him irritates me, like a tiny pebble stuck in my shoe. I can't quite say exactly why that's so, but I can say that Jim Lehrer (1st Presidential debate) and Gwen Ifill (vice-presidential debate) didn't irritate me at all. In fact I was mildly impressed with Lehrer's performance.
  
• Part of the reason I turned off the debate is that McCain now officially aggravates me. These days whenever I hear McCain speak I start cringing. McCain doesn't even have to be spouting bald faced lies anymore (lies, not gross exagerations, plain lies), McCain says anything and I cringe like Pavlov's dogs.
• I saw one debate clip where McCain was lurking evil-like in the background as Obama talked. Creepy as all heck. Unfortunate for McCain. It makes me wonder what the cameraman was thinking. Perhaps the screen would have cut McCain in half if the camera had been centered on Obama?
  

UPDATE: Oh yeah, McCain's oratorical habit of saying, "my friends"? Entirely too presumptuous. I'll decide who my friends are, thank you. Please, just stop it. Stop it. I'm begging you. STOP.

U.S. Vice - Presidential Debate

Well, I just finished watching the first and only United States vice-presidential debate for this election (tonight is/was also the first English and second Prime Ministerial debate in Canada, by the way) between Democrat Senator Joe Biden and Republican Governor Sarah Palin.

Random thoughts on tonight's debate (comments on the first presidential debate can be found here):

• Biden performed very well. He acted like a vice-president, or for that matter a president, as well. Experienced, knowledgeable, passionate, and regardless of whether you agree with his politics Biden was someone I'm accustomed to seeing on the national and world stage.
• Palin, unfortunately, is not ready for national or international politics. It felt like Palin had prepared talking points and if she didn't like a question Palin talked about those instead (typically energy policy in the first half). To me, Palin is a local politician with a shallow grasp of issues. For example, with the topic of McCain's support of deregulating financial markets and Wall Street Palin instead talked about Alaskan energy policy.
• Palin kept on hammering the talking point that Obama-Biden are too focused on the past (ie. Bush-Republican screw-ups) to be agents of change. Every time I kept wanting to shout:

  "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." -- George Santana.

  Biden was much more succint: Past is prologue.
• Perhaps part of the reason I have such a good impression of Biden is that for once someone on television actually did what I told them to do. Palin stupidly said, and maybe it's the scientist in me but that's just what it was, stupid:

  "...there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don't want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?"

  I was silently screaming, how can you formulate a solution if you don't know what causes it!? And to my elation Biden's reply:

  "If you don't understand what the cause is, it's virtually impossible to come up with a solution."

  Ahhh... balm to my wounded soul. You'd understand if you knew how rarely this happens for me.
• Palin acted like someone who had crammed for an exam, reciting talking points from memory, with no deep understanding of the issues and unable to answer anything not in CliffsNotes.
  
• Most of my points being critical of Palin (she scares me), I should add that Palin performed adequately (if you weren't looking for substance), given how low the expectation bar had been set.
• I haven't read what the pundits have said, yet, but it wouldn't amaze me if Republicans declared this debate a tie. Given where the polls are right now, Palin needed to do more than just hold her ground. Who knows, Palin may halt the crash but her debate performance alone won't reverse the declining polls.
  
• Palin being one step away, one heart beat, from the presidency scares me. I can't say it enough. It scares me. McCain is what, 72 years old? With a history of recurring melanoma? With a 1 in 7 to 1 in 6 chance of dieing in the first two years of a first term? How can this not scare people? I'm all for privacy, but President of the United States is too important a job for this type of uncertainty. McCain should stop playing peek-a-boo with his medical records.
  

U.S. Presidential Debate

Last night was the first U.S. Presidential Debate between Democratic nominee Barack Obama and Republican nominee John McCain.

In the past U.S. politics never interested me beyond who the current president was, and I would have never even thought about watching a debate. The past 7-8 years have changed my mind. Politicians are not all the same. Some are noticeably worse than others. In fact, some are downright scary.

Anywhoo... I watched last night's debate. Random thoughts follow.

• McCain is much shorter than Obama, though CNN tried to hide it by zooming in on McCain and zooming out on Obama.
• Had I known the debate was on other channels I would not have watched CNN. CNN had too much junk on the bottom of the screen.
• McCain performed better than I expected after having watched his disastrous speeches. Ever watch the show Monk? Adrian Monk at his most painfully phobic is how I feel when I see a McCain speech, without the humour.
• Behind in the polls, I think McCain had to perform noticeably better than Obama. Didn't happen. Ignoring the issues, at the most it was a tie and more likely a small lead for Obama.
• Obama performed above expectations, given foreign policy is supposed to be McCain's strength. Obama displayed thorough and well versed knowledge on foreign policy.
  
• McCain came off as cold.
• McCain, please don't smile. It scares me. Really. Hallowe'en is next month.
• They both had a couple good zingers. The best was Obama, paraphrasing, "I won't be lectured on unwise statements by someone who sings about bombing Iran". Another good one was Obama's reference to McCain's statement that he wouldn't meet with the President of Spain, a NATO ally.
• On some topics I thought Obama provided much more substantive answers.
• At times I was forced to mute McCain else risk aggravation. One such instance was when McCain started giving an anecdotal story to prove soldiers want to stay in Iraq. Even if true (which it is not if you read polls), anecdotal is anecdotal. It's not proof, and it should not be used as proof. Must be the scientist in me. Another instance was when McCain referred to the fact he was a POW. Yes, McCain, we KNOW. You use 'POW' like Rudy Guiliani uses '9/11': every sentence is a noun, a verb, and POW.
  

Look in the mirror, much?

Does anyone else think this is funny?

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can invade its neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it. Things have changed." -- Condoleezza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State, on the conflict between Russia and Georgia, August 2008.

Economic Stimulus

I was getting a little anxious, but the other day I finally received a cheque from the Internal Revenue Service as a part of the $64 billion Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 pushed through by the United States Congress in February 2008.

As the name suggests, the cheques were sent in the hope that consumers would spend it, thereby stimulating the economy and avert/alleviate a recession. When this Act was initially passed, I was glad to get some of my money back but doubtful that the stimulus would do as intended. Back in February I guess the economic gloom wasn't yet so dark as it is presently, nevertheless, I couldn't imagine there being enough spendthrifts to affect the economy. Surely the majority of consumers wouldn't follow the example of record deficits and debts of the US government. There are bills to pay, after all.

I have no idea if the stimulus worked, works, or will work as designed -- I'll leave that up to the economists; this is all just a round about way for me to say that back in February I did intend to spend my $600, probably to subsidize a flat-screen television. But, now? No way, no how. At least, not in a way that I think would accomplish what the Act intended.

My cheque is going to pay for gas. My cheque is going into my bank account, from which it will be used to pay off my credit cards, with which I purchase gasoline. Assuming prices stay the same (psyche!) I calculate $600 will pay for 3-months of gas. Frightening.

Half a tank of gasoline can cost me $40-50. That's half. That only lasts me a week.

I never thought I'd say this, but purchasing a motorcycle or scooter is getting more appealing by the day. The thing is, buying one would set me back several thousand dollars at least (not even including all the other associated costs), so it would be some time before I recouped the cost in gas savings. The other thing is, I doubt gas prices will drop, and the sooner I started, the sooner I'd recoup the cost and the more money I'd save.

::sigh::

Keith Olbermann comments on John McCain

Nice. Keith Olbermann takes issue with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Senator John McCain's callousness and mutually exclusive statements. Watch both parts if you haven't seen it, yet.

Countdown special comment Part I


Countdown special commment Part II

John Edwards and The Colbert Report

Although I can't vote in U.S. elections, I still had my preferred presidential candidate, ever since he first ran for the Democratic nomination back in 2004. Too bad former Senator John Edwards decided to suspend his campaign earlier this year. Edwards appeared earlier this week on The Colbert Report and I thought his bit was very funny.

Anyhoo, here's Edwards' appearance:

Canada rejects CIA evidence

Tainted Evidence: Canada tosses CIA terror testimony obtained through waterboarding (Newsweek):

"The Canadian government is no longer using evidence gained from CIA interrogations of a top Al Qaeda detainee who was waterboarded.

According to documents obtained by NEWSWEEK, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), the country's national-security agency, last month quietly withdrew statements by alleged Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah from public papers outlining the case against two alleged terror "sleeper" operatives in Ottawa and Montreal.

The move, which so far has received no public attention, is the latest sign of potential international fallout from the CIA's recent confirmation that it waterboarded a handful of high-profile Al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003. The use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques were approved by the Bush White House and Justice Department. Waterboarding, which critics charge is a form of torture, involves strapping a suspect to an inclined board and forcing water into his lungs, typically by pouring water through a cloth placed over his nose and mouth.

[...]

Bernard Beckhoff, a spokesman for Canada's public safety ministry, which oversees CSIS, said he could not comment on developments in either case because they are both still before the courts. But he then added, pointedly: "The CSIS director has stated publicly that torture is morally repugnant and not particularly reliable. CSIS does not knowingly use information which has been obtained through torture."

[...]

the development was immediately seized on by human-rights advocates as proof that the Bush administration's use of interrogation techniques rejected by the rest of the world will undermine counterterrorism cases in foreign courts. "This shows how the United States is shooting itself in the foot in terrorism cases," said John Sifton, the director of One World Research, a public-interest group that investigates human-rights abuses internationally."

Bold is mine.

Florida finally accepts evolution

I have to admit I was shocked when I read this article:

"TALLAHASSEE, Florida - Florida's State Board of Education has voted to use the term "scientific theory of evolution" in its new science standards, the first time the word "evolution" has been included.

Florida's current standards require the teaching of evolution using code words like "change over time."

Religious conservatives oppose the teaching of evolution or want schools to also teach religious ideas of creationism or intelligent design, which says the universe is so complex that science alone cannot explain the origins of life.

A Gallup poll released in June said America is about evenly split over whether evolution is true, despite decades of overwhelming scientific evidence that it is." --msnbc

It's not like I'm not aware of the large number of Americans who fail to give credence to the theory of evolution despite the scientific evidence. Nevertheless I'm always dismayed and surprised whenever I'm reminded of this fact. Learning that an actual state board of education had been playing word games in refusing to use "evolution" in its science standards was extremely disappointing and depressing.

84% of Americans believe global warming is occurring; despite the scientific evidence behind evolution being even more robust than that behind global warming, only 15% believe humans evolved without divine intervention.

Ugh. We can add that 30% of this year's candidates for the Republican nominee for President of the United States don't believe in evolution, either. Double ugh.

Canadian diplomat manual: prisoners in USA at risk of torture

I saw this article (U.S. in Canadian manual as possible torture site) on cnn.com. Part of me wonders why this is considered newsworthy. Isn't the U.S.A. the only country that doesn't admit (since the current administration, at least) waterboarding is torture? Actually, that might not be true. I have no idea whether countries like Israel, Afghanistan, China, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Syria admit to torturing prisoners (and in the above article Israel denies doing so).

Anywhoo, main points of the article:

• Training manual for Canadian diplomats: U.S a place where prisoners may be at risk
• Israel, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia also are on list; Canada says it's not official policy
• Manual cites U.S. interrogation techniques and singles out Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
• Document inadvertently released to Amnesty International lawyers working on lawsuit

Shooting the messenger

I posted previously regarding my concerns with the Canadian government deliberately overriding the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's order to shut down the Chalk River nuclear facility until safety issues were addressed (Bad precedent).

Now I read that:

"The federal government has fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, days after she publicly accused Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn of interfering with the independence of the arm's-length watchdog [...]

The Chalk River reactor generates two-thirds of the radioisotopes used around the world in medical procedures and tests. It was shut down on Nov. 18 because of safety concerns.

A ministerial directive on Dec. 10 ordered the CNSC to reopen the site. The agency refused, insisting a backup safety system be installed to prevent the risk of a meltdown during an earthquake or other disaster.

On Dec. 11, an emergency measure passed through the House of Commons overturning the watchdog's decision, and the reactor was restarted for a 120-day run on Dec. 16." -- cbc.ca

Earthquakes in Ontario? They have to be joking right? Actually, no:

"At a CNSC meeting earlier in the month, it was revealed that two earthquakes occurred in the Chalk River area since the facility's reopening, though the AECL said neither was strong enough to be a safety concern." -- cbc.ca

Bold and italics are mine.

It's only a matter of time. I think the Canadian government has so far responded to this situation in an extremely short-sighted and dangerous manner. What I want to know is why the AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.), a federal Crown corporation, hasn't been taken to task for running a nuclear facility that fails to meet safety standards.

Bad precedent

What the -- ?! I *really* hope I'm not the only one worried by the fact that Canada's Conservative government has overruled and essentially ignored the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission:

An Ontario nuclear reactor resumed operations Sunday and new supplies of medical isotopes will be ready for distribution within days to ease a worldwide shortage, the Atomic Energy of Canada says.

The Crown corporation said its National Research Universal reactor in Chalk River started up at 3:44 a.m. ET Sunday, a few days after Parliament pushed through legislation to get it back online as soon as possible.

The facility was originally shut down for a week of maintenance on Nov. 18, but the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission refused to allow it to resume production until a host of safety issues were resolved.

However, the Chalk River facility produces about two-thirds of the world's supply of radioisotopes — nuclear material essential for medical imaging and diagnostic scans for fractures, cancers and heart conditions.

The shutdown created a global shortage of radioisotopes, which can't be stockpiled because they have a short shelf life [...]

The Conservative government's bill, which was passed by MPs on Tuesday, effectively bypassed the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's order for the reactor to stay closed until the safety concerns were addressed. Late Wednesday, the Senate passed the legislation.

On Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he had accepted the resignation of Michael Burns, chair of the AECL, and appointed Glenna Carr, a former Ontario senior bureaucrat, to replace him. -- cbc.ca

Bold and italics are mine.

This can't be a good idea....

Sex on the City

Polytheism and Democracy?

I read an article by Richard Handler on cbc.ca. These are a few excerpts to give the gist - follow the link for the entire article.

Why can't God be more like us?
November 28, 2007

Christopher Hitchens, the British-born contrarian and atheist, has written a best-selling book called God is Not Great in which he thumbs his nose at Allah, Yahweh and all religion for that matter.

I don't know if God is great or not but I 'm sure of one thing: He/She/It isn't a democrat [...]

The Greeks didn't believe in sentimental, loving gods [...] the classical gods made life hard for humans. They weren't out to improve our condition. The only things they seemed to have a true interest in were valour and human achievement [...]

The Greeks, and the Romans who followed them, understood human fallibility. They believed mortals could question their gods, who were as imperfect as they were. They believed that all beings — divine and human — were prone to error.

The second great advantage to polytheism is its openness. It gave the ancient world a modern, Canadian virtue — diversity.

The Greeks were the original multiculturalists. There was always room in the temple for a new god, as long as his or her highness didn't want to take over the place.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are downright exclusive when it comes to sharing the limelight. Have no other gods before Me, say the opening commandments (depending on your Bible) [...]

[...] the Greeks understood the world as a complicated, savage and less than perfect place. Even their democracy was imperfect [...]

I've always found it puzzling that democracy, with all its ragged, free-for-all imperfections, is heralded as the supreme political model while our Western religious traditions are so monotheistic and narrow.

God is a dictator, demanding perfection from his underlings. OK, He gives us free will to make ourselves miserable. But if political life should be democratic, why shouldn't religion? If we were created in God's image, why can't God be more like us?

The Greeks and the Romans that I see in Rome understand the world is a quixotic and perilous place. They make allegiances and hope to command a smidgen of honour for their family, friends and community.

The ancient world lived as if all creation was a permanent minority government. Life tottered on the edge of a no confidence vote by the powers that be.

As coarse and politically incorrect as those ancient people were, at least to our way of thinking today, their many gods prepared them for a steely-eyed life without illusion.

We have progressed in many ways since then, especially in our science and technology. But perhaps those ancient peoples were wiser than us.

Today, we seem to live in a world of fierce moralists and one-God believers. Maybe we should take a lesson from the Greeks and Romans and allow more democracy into our modern religions. Then we might all rest a little more easily.

U.S. withdraws subpoena seeking identity of 24,000 Amazon.com customers

By the Associated Press in the Herald Tribune:

MADISON, Wisconsin: U.S. prosecutors have withdrawn a subpoena seeking the identities of thousands of people who bought used books through online retailer Amazon.com Inc., newly unsealed court records show.

The withdrawal came after a judge ruled the customers have a right to keep their reading habits from the government […]

[U.S. Magistrate Judge] Crocker — who unsealed documents detailing the showdown against prosecutors' wishes — […] "The subpoena is troubling because it permits the government to peek into the reading habits of specific individuals without their knowledge or permission," Crocker wrote. "It is an unsettling and un-American scenario to envision federal agents nosing through the reading lists of law-abiding citizens while hunting for evidence against somebody else." […]

The initial subpoena sought records of 24,000 transactions dating back to 1999. The company turned over many records but refused to identify the book buyers, citing their right to keep their reading choices private.

Prosecutors later narrowed the subpoena, asking the company to identify a sample of 120 customers.

Crocker brokered a compromise in which the company would send a letter to the 24,000 customers describing the investigation and asking them to voluntarily contact prosecutors if they were interested in testifying.

Prosecutors said they obtained the customer information they needed from […] computers they seized earlier in the investigation.

Crocker scolded prosecutors in July for not looking for alternatives earlier. […] "If the government had been more diligent in looking for workarounds instead of baring its teeth when Amazon balked, it's probable that this entire First Amendment showdown could have been avoided," he wrote.

Climate politics: What every president should know

There’s an interesting quiz on Nature.com regarding climate physics taken from an undergraduate class, “Physics for future presidents”, taught by Richard A. Muller at the University of California, Berkeley.

My score was 6/17 -- only slightly better than if I had answered every question randomly ::ouch:: though I admit I did end up guessing for a lot of them.

Anywhoo, on to the quiz:

1) Electricity from the wall plug costs about 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). If you were to get the same electricity by buying AAA alkaline batteries at the local store, the cost of that electricity would be:

(a) 15 cents per kWh

(b) 94 cents per kWh

(c) $2.50 per kWh

(d) $1,000 per kWh

2) A gram of which of these is most toxic?

(a) Botulinum toxin

(b) Arsenic

(c) Anthrax spores

(d) Plutonium dust (inhaled)

3) The highest achieved efficiency (solar energy converted to electrical energy) of solar cells is approximately:

(a) 4%

(b) 15%

(c) 28%

(d) 41%

4) A typical high-resolution spy satellite has how long to photograph a location?

(a) 10 seconds

(b) 1 minute

(c) 12 minutes

(d) 90 minutes

5) The dose for radiation illness (50% chance of death within a month) is 300 rem, whole body. The dose to trigger on average one cancer is:

(a) 2.5 rem

(b) 25 rem

(c) 250 rem

(d) 2,500 rem

6) Compared with a gallon of gasoline, the energy supplied by a gallon of liquid hydrogen is approximately:

(a) ⅓ (that is, it has less energy per gallon)

(b) The same energy per gallon

(c) 3 times more energy per gallon

(d) 12 times more energy per gallon

7) Compared with the energy released when a pound of gasoline is burnt, the energy released when a pound of TNT is exploded is about:

(a) 2 times greater

(b) 13 times greater

(c) the same, within 40%

(d) less by a factor of 15

8) Of the deaths caused by the Hiroshima atomic bomb, the fraction attributed to cancer was:

(a) Less than 2%

(b) About 7%

(c) About 20%

(d) More than 50%

9) A critical mass of plutonium has a volume of:

(a) 3 tablespoons

(b) 1 soft-drink can

(c) 1 gallon

(d) 3 gallons

10) In one computer cycle (a billionth of a second for a slow laptop), light travels about:

(a) 1 foot (30 centimetres)

(b) 300 metres

(c) 3 kilometres

(d) 300 kilometres

11) In the past 100 years, the carbon dioxide level in Earth's atmosphere has increased by what fraction of its previous value?

(a) Less than 1%

(b) 3%

(c) 30%

(d) 112%

12) The rocket that won the X Prize in 2004 achieved an altitude of 100 kilometres. To go into orbit would require more energy. How much more?

(a) 1.414 times more

(b) 2 times more

(c) 7 times more

(d) 32 times more

13) The International Atomic Energy Agency's 2006 estimate for the number of excess cancer deaths expected worldwide from the Chernobyl nuclear accident was:

(a) Less than 1,000

(b) 4,000

(c) 24,000

(d) 1.3 million

14) The ozone layer in the atmosphere is created by:

(a) Carbon dioxide

(b) Sunlight

(c) Sulphur from fossil fuels

(d) Chlorofluorocarbon compounds (such as Freon)

15) Light in a fibre carries more information per second than electricity in a wire because:

(a) It has a higher frequency

(b) It travels faster than electricity

(c) It makes use of quantum effects

(d) It doesn't. Wires transmit higher bit rates. (That's why they are used in computers.)

16) The power in a square kilometre of sunlight is:

(a) 1 kilowatt

(b) 1 megawatt

(c) 10 megawatts

(d) 1 gigawatt

17) To be legal for consumption in the United States, the radioactivity of one litre of ethanol (drinking alcohol) must be:

(a) Less than 12 decays per minute

(b) Below the threshold of standard Geiger counters

(c) Not measurable by accelerator mass spectrometry (the most sensitive detection method)

(d) More than 4,000 decays per minute

Here are the correct answers: Answers to Physics for future presidents (pdf).

Telecoms give out customer records

Does anyone actually have good feelings towards telecoms? I think they're more in the category of necessary evils.

Bold and italics are mine.

Verizon admitted that it had provided the telephone records of its customers to federal authorities on hundreds of occasions since 2005 and did so without having received any court orders.

From January 2005 to September 2007, Verizon gave personal data to federal authorities, without legal cover, 720 times. That works out to at least once every working day. [...] The company also said it turned over information to authorities armed with court orders or subpoenas a total of 94,000 times during that same two-year period.

Verizon said police and intelligence agencies also asked not only for information about the person making the call, but on all the people that person called and the names of all the people these recipients called as well. [...]

The country's largest carrier, AT&T, also replied to the committee's requests. The telephone giant provided no detail of its surveillance activities but it agreed with Verizon that telephone companies were not equipped nor prepared to determine the legitimacy of federal requests for customer information [...] Legal experts say that is nonsense since, if lives are at stake, there is a provision in the law that gives the feds the ability to get a legal tap as quickly as they want. [...]

An executive of Qwest, another American telecom provider, has charged that his company was punished by the Bush administration after it questioned the legality of some requests being made of it by the National Security Agency. The NSA is the country's electronic spymaster. [...] In 2006, the newspaper USA Today reported that the NSA was collecting the phone records of tens of millions of Americans with the co-operation of the telephone companies. It reported that Qwest refused to go along with these efforts and expressed concern that the activity was illegal. [...]

On Wednesday, in the op-ed pages of the Washington Post, a column written by the presidents of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Christian Coalition of America — two unlikely colleagues — set out a mutual complaint.

Both were objecting to an initial Verizon decision to deny the pro-choice group a text-message service that would allow those who wished to receive news updates from NARAL (an acronym of National Abortion Rights Action League) after typing in a five-digit code.

This censorship was exposed in the New York Times and Verizon eventually backed down. But the two presidents, NARAL's Nancy Keenan and Christian Coalition's Roberta Combs wrote, "We are on the opposite sides of almost every issue. But when it comes to the fundamental right of citizens to participate in the political process, we're united and very, very worried." -- CBC News.

Me too. Next year's presidential election can't come soon enough.