Welcome to my Province!!!
And yup - Snow!
I had to dig a family member's car out of the snow already. We've had a few large snowfalls this year. I grew up in this stuff, so even when I'm in places that don't currently get this snow, I've been there. The volume also depends where you live, as in how high you live. BC is made up of a lot of mountain passes and valleys so one house can get buried, while your friend's place a few Km away may only get three feet of snow.

The first link is about China. Do they use the same vaccination schedule as we do? Do they use the same vaccine? How good is their record-keeping? Were there 1000 randomly sampled people from all over China, or from one specific place in the province?

They furthermore only mention that that one province has the mandatory vaccinations. Do the others? Are there a lot of unvaccinated people coming through the area that could disrupt the herd immunity effect? Like, say, a few tens of unvaccinated people at Disney?

The second link is someone trying to sell a DVD. There is absolutely no information there, just claims that have been refuted to the end of the universe and back. And some fearmongery correlation/causation conflation. Did you know that the Internet was getting built up at the same time as the skyrocketing Autism rate? I bet the Internet causes autism.

Third link: It is entirely believable that RIGHT NOW the measles vaccine causes more complications than the measles does. Because there are only a couple hundred cases of the measles in the US per year. It is all but eradicated, because of the vaccine, which means that it kills very few people.

If you go back before the vaccine, though, around 500,000 people had the measles a year (and this is probably a low guess, per the link). Around 20% of those had to be hospitalized. About four times more people died from it than now have fatal complications due to the vaccine.

No vaccine: (Possibly much) more than 500,000 people sick. 100,000 people hospitalized. 1,000-10,000 brain damaged. A few hundred dead (not a super fatal disease). Thousands more get liver damage, hearing damage, eye damage, other complications.

Vaccine: Assuming we're at a 90% vaccination rate, around 3,500,000 kids vaccinated a year. ~100 dead, per your link. 1000 with dangerously high fever. Deafness/seizure/brain-damage: So rare that a link to the vaccine can not be established. Autism: Completely fabricated and discredited.

This has a good chart comparing the relative danger, for equal numbers infected/vaccinated. If we stopped vaccinating, it would not take long to get back to where dealing with the measles was a dangerous rite of passage for almost every kid.

Being a type I diabetic and a two time cancer survivour, it's saved my life.

However, we have a national program that helps keep wait times low, regulates drug purchases, and moderates which provinces/territories get funding from the feds, that is going to expire thanks to our PM.

This means there'll be no federal quality control, and drug purchasing will get downloaded onto the provinces. Some can handle it, most can not.

We have an election in the fall, we'll see if Harper wins. I sure as hell hope he doesn't.

Notice the engine on the turntable has the name "Montreal?" These are engines in Sri Lanka given by Canada in the 50's as part of the Colombo plan exchanges. They've kept them going strong for quite a while! The one named after my home province was involved in the boxing day tsunami.


They got that one running again.

http://www.kodikara.net/blog/2011/07/24/m2-%E2%80%93-the-legendary-workhorse-of-the-sri-lankan-railway/

The German counterpart of Bill Nye and his camera crew were the first foreign reporters allowed to film inside Fukushima Daichi. The resulting 42 minute report was aired last night by one of our public broadcasters, and it was just as depressing as I expected it to be.

Skip to ~33:30 to catch a few glimpses at what the cleanup effort in the orange zone of Fukushima province looks like: removing the top soil of every square meter of exposed land, often by hand; and scrubbing every square inch of wall, all of it by hand.

In the past tense, I'd agree but not today. For starters, First Nation people have 100% full Canadian citizenship and the only distinctions made based on a persons treaty status compared to a non-treaty neighbour in any Canadian city is additional rights and benefits that are potentially available to the treaty person. That is to say, First Nations people have all the full rights of everyone else in Canada, and in some situations bonuses as well.

That said, living conditions on Native Reserves in Canada are abysmal. The municipality I live in is just vastly better off than the nearby native reserves. Better access to education, policing, fire protection and health care. If that weren't bad enough, average family incomes in my municipality more than double those of neighbouring native reserve communities.

That abysmal divide in conditions though is NOT an example of we as Canadians treating First Nations terribly. If you take per capita taxes collected from community and take away per capita government dollars put back in, my community still gives more to the government than it gets back. The neighbouring reserves with far worse conditions receive far more money from the government than they pay it back. Systemically, the Canadian government is economically favouring the neighbouring reserves.

That begs the question why are conditions there so abysmal, and I can't claim to fully understand it myself. The components I DO know are at work though are many:
1.Reserves are NOT fit into government the same way as municipalities are. While my municipality is under Provincial jurisdiction, reserves are parallel with the provinces and fall directly under the federal government. The idea is reserves deserve greater autonomy to respect First Nations unique status and treaty obligations. In practice though, IMO they lose out. My community has education and health care handled by the province, which great benefits those kind of items. Reserves are responsible for those things on their own.
2. Reserves create segregation. The idea is again respecting treaty agreements and protecting First Nations culture from being overwhelmed and assimilated. In practice, that isolation is crippling the communities rather than helping them.
3. Historic abuses against previous generations of First Nations people at the hands of government get passed down to the next generation. This is amplified by the segregation on reserves.
4. Absence of accountability. The same transparency rules that apply to my municipality and all other municipalities nation wide do not apply on reserves. If my mayor spends millions of city dollars paying him or his family to do almost nothing it is more traceable than if a chief on a reserve did the same thing. Again, the idea is provide greater autonomy and not 'force' white beuracracy on First Nations, but the effect is to make it harder for them to hold their own leaders to account.

That's hardly a comprehensive list, but I think it highlights a lot of ways in which the current generation of Canadians running the country are very conscience of treating First Nations well and just failing at it through mutual mistakes. Any efforts to convert the failed reserve systems to municipality status will by fought the most by the very people living in the failed reserves. I wish knew how to move things forward to a better place, but the root is nothing as simple as 'treat First Nations better'.

I just found out this new trend is also happening Canada. Provinces are voting it one by one. Why is that not on the news ?!

(Reuters) - About 30 Syrian government fighters were killed when rebels set off a bomb in a tunnel beneath a checkpoint in a northwestern province, activists said on Tuesday.

Videos and images posted by opposition supporters online showed a massive plume of smoke and earth shooting into the air near a small town as men shouted "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest).

Rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad regularly carry out guerrilla attacks against his forces, but the size of the blast, which occurred on Monday, was unusual.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said the blast took place outside the town of Ma'arat al-Nu'man in the northwestern Idlib province.

At least two officers were among those killed when insurgents from the Islamic Front and the Shields of the Revolution Council set off tons of explosives in a tunnel running from the road to the checkpoint, the group said.

@BoneRemake et. al.:

I will answer to your comment for a change, Read the following paragraph, which is one of the last paragraphs and the meat of the matter if you want the short answer. For you or any that desire to join in Group Therapy, then continue reading.

Submissions to this Site are governed. I do not care...nor am I constrained to care or consider if, when, where, whether, how, etc., someone reads or does not read the guidelines. Nor am I constrained to care or consider whether their violation of said guidelines is intentional, accident of misinterpretation, the violators age, intelligence, sex or lack thereof, hair color.... AND I DO NOT CARE ! I am empowered to initiate, second, contest (which I do), or ignore an invocation of Ban. The reason I do not care is that each and every banee is informed at the time of banning that there are available avenues for redress in the occurrence of mitigating circumstance(s) or professed reorientation and thereby capable of productive and compliant participation at the Sift if that is, becomes, or ever was their intended purpose.


<Do you honestly have no clue as to what you do ? >
On one hand I might say arguably better than do you...on the other who really does?

<The only thing I personaly respect about what you do with the ban thing is that you adhere the Terms of service ( which everyone reads of course right ??? ).>
What can I say to that...ok.

<The rest of the time you deny possible gems in the rough without any warning.>
Blanket generalizations are inherently ridiculous and unsupportable. Aside from that your statement of observation is highly speculative and the issue of warning is mute besides.

< I mean I do not want to be so in your face, but to see you write that made me mad.>
I was polite and succinct. It is my privilege to exercise to inquire....the rest is a personal problem with which you must deal though I would wish otherwise for you and myself.

<You have denied so many possible peole here without any incling of the genuine purpose of the site,>
I have denied no peole(sic) here, possible or otherwise. As far as my having an incling(sic) this is again arguable to contestable and at best highly speculative on your part. I would submit to you, however, that the purpose of the site is served and supported by the originator(s) of the site and the rules and policies that they deem necessary and relevant. The interpretive perimeters by which they are implemented are set and monitored for compliance by those same individuals. If you have an issue with those policies there is ample avenue for open discussion and elucidation, not with me...not my job by happenstance or inclination.

<you just outright ban people>
I patently do not. I may and do initiate or second a ban and that only. Checks and Balances.

<and we are not stupid>
I wouldn't touch that with a ten foot pole. Really...we?...am I included?...how many are you?...whom all?...of course you are not.

<it is so you can garner some form of level up>
Your point? My motivation(s) for participation on any or whatever level I so chose or in what manner I choose is my own and not for you or anyone else to judge but for a quantifiable breach of demeanor and then not solely by but a couple of individuals. Do you not submit videos, comments, polls, etc., and accept comments, votes, badges, etc? If I were someone else here I might comment on the desirability of some number of those submissions as relates to the quality and genuine purpose of this or any site for that matter. But I am not that or any someone else and make no such judgement at this time about your contributions including the relevant comment.

<you got called on a lot of things in the past in that regard>
Really, how many...how many with objective merit or...on down and so what? As far as called on, you might say that is true of both of us and perhaps more so for you and then comes the argument respective to justifiability on grounds.

<SERIOUSLY ? ? you ask her why she explained

that ??>
You got me on that one, Yes, However, I did not pass a value judgement, express any alternate or opposing view or stance. Therefore I might profess some surprise at the timbre of your comments. Love you still.

While much of that which I attempted to cover strained answerability, much or most of the remainder defies it and so the following which is a departure from the set format.

Speaking to what may be trenchant to this matter overall is the following:

Submissions to this Site are governed. I do not care...nor am I constrained to care or consider if, when, where, whether, how, etc., someone reads or does not read the guidelines. Nor am I constrained to care or consider whether their violation of said guidelines is intentional, accident of misinterpretation, the violators age, intelligence, sex or lack thereof, hair color.... AND I DO NOT CARE ! I am empowered to initiate, seconded, contest (which I do), or ignore an invocation of Ban. The reason I do not care is that each and every banee is informed at the time of banning that there are available avenues for redress in the occurrence of mitigating circumstance(s) and thereby capable of productive and compliant participation at the Sift if that is, becomes, or ever was their intended purpose.

All the indulgence outside of this stance which is the sole province of the commenter and not binding...is merely that...indulgence and any and all are free to exercise their proclivity to such.

That was fun, overall, and I too love you enough to respond having done so with no vehemence, unsupportable assertions, profanity, personal aspersions, ear biting, eye gouging, or tongue pulling.

Again, love you Boneremake. Let's do this again sometime....NOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooo...,

Things will change in Canada now, Harper did a sneaky modification to health care. They're limiting the amount that the Federal gov't will give the provinces. They're also putting limitations on things that should not be limited (eg. nurses, Veteran support, specialists.)

In Ontario, things are pretty good. It has it's problems, but everyone can get seen. I think, unless this legislation gets changed, it's going to start going down hill in the next five to ten years.

2 week hospital stay nurses checking in every half hour, even while we slept.

liquid food for 8 days through an IV, nurse told me it was 750 per bag/24 H

Specialists attending..

Four CAT scans maybe six. depending on how you want to group the time frame.

um...

ambulance ride covered by the province.

they took blood work twice a day.. I mean people were all up in my shit, LITERALLY ! oh a colonoscopy, and dietician.

SO those two weeks cost Alberta/Canada a lot of money. How much would that cost a person who is poor as fuck with a pre existing condition ?

I really wonder because if it was more than 500 dollars I would be in debt pretty decent if it was not for the health care system Canada has.

This elective stuff.. when I was getting scanned for tumors in my head or abnormalities again a CAT scan, I had to wait for a month, and it was not life threatening stuff, the EEG I waited 2 weeks for. again not life threatening.

My experience has been very well, although sometimes it has pissed me off. If I had this shit happen to me in America I think a bullet that costs .05 cents would be a better option that a life of 12 thousand a year debt for.. ever.

I did not like that one person, senators a -ok, doctor a-ok.. name plate hidden jack ass- not so much.

Oh and my pills costs roughly 90-120 dollars a month, I actually don't know because I have never paid for them.

GO CANADA!
GO ALBERTA !
being poor sucks though. been sick for a year.

True dat, and as far as audience's facial responses go, typically German from any region, over-scrutinizing, province and war-remorse-oriented, otherwise, the YT gab from Germans speaks tomes to the same overall sentiments from native speaking Germano-types still caught-up in their own particular brand of dysfunction......buncha tight-assed Vaterland-style motherfuckers kinna pissed that The U.S. bothered' em while they were shitting on the planet typea-volk.

Sandra shines as always, self-effacing giggles when she knows she might be a bit off regionally, and having to look at douchebags in the audience with corn-cobs embedded permanently in their assess and still remaining as sweet and as charming as ever. Much love Sandra, keepin' it real.


NOW. Dicks and pussies climb up my ass with the racism card, and suck you your own assess. Got a fuckload of German in my blood, as well as (insert here, most races, creeds, or colors, though quite possibly no Chinese, all hail mankind's supreme overlords).

I've never believed Religion should make a difference on a person's ability to run a state, province or country

I visited south-eastern China and they fed me cat meat. I thought is was pretty gross at first, but I actually started to like it. If anyone goes too Guangdong province in China they make a really good dish with meatballs.

I wish this conflict were as simple as the courageous young woman reporter in this video portrays it but it doesn't take much research to discover that the FSA is increasingly being co-opted by anything BUT pro-democracy elements, namely Islamic jihadists allied with al-Qaeda.

For example:

"Hundreds of fighters under the command of the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) have reportedly switched allegiance to al-Qaeda-aligned groups, in a move described as a huge blow to moderate rebel forces.

Activists and military sources have told Al Jazeera that the 11th Division - one of the biggest FSA brigades - has switched allegiance to the al-Nusra Front in Raqqah province, a border province with Turkey.

A video was uploaded to YouTube on Thursday purporting to show members of the 11th Division parading through Raqqah with Nusra fighters.

In the video clip, a voice can be heard saying in Arabic, "Raqqah ... September 19, 2013 ... The convoy of Nusra ... God is great ... Nusra in Raqqah province."

The switch, if confirmed, tightens Nusra's control of Raqqah just days after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) attacked members of the Free Syrian Army in Azaz, on the border with Turkey.

The Reuters news agency, citing sources inside Syria, also reported that entire units of the FSA had joined Nusra and the ISIS in recent days.

The Raqqah Revolutionaries - which is part of the 11th Division - has about 750 fighters in total, according to a source close to al-Qaeda linked forces.

Abdulhamid Zakarya, military spokesman of Chiefs of Staff of the FSA, denied that Division 11 had joined Nusra. However, he said it had signed an agreement to collaborate in military operations.

In a separate statement, the FSA also condemned the ISIS for its actions in Azaz, saying it was going against the principles of the Syrian revolution.

“ISIS no longer fights the Assad regime. Rather, it is strengthening its positions in liberated areas at the expense of the safety of civilians. ISIS is inflicting on the people the same suppression of the Baath party and the Assad regime.”

Anita McNaught, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Antakya in neighbouring Turkey, said that if proved true, the switches of allegiance would be a serious blow to the FSA's strength, and could have significant implications outside of Syria.

The US State Department designated Al Nusrah Front a terrorist organisation on 11 December 2012. There are financial sanctions in place.

"This means that the FSA has suddenly lost serious amounts of loyal fighters ... it's basically being swallowed up by Nusra," she said, adding that it would be very difficult for the West to support a rebel army dominated and commanded by al-Qaeda linked groups."