Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

Your examples are flawed.

Place a rose-tinted glass in front of someone, and they would think you've placed a rose-tinted glass in front of them. The would expect the image transmitted by the glass to be rose-tinted as well.

Place a white sheet in front of them, and they would think you've placed a white sheet in front of them. They would expect to see a white sheet.

Place a clear object, such as a drinking glass, in front of them, they would think you've placed a drinking glass in front of them. They would expect to see through it, maybe expecting a perfect image, maybe a distorted one.

Fill that glass with water, and they do NOT expect to see a reversed image. It's an illusion. The arrows are not faced right, they are faced left, but they SEEM to be facing right.

By your yardstick, a mirage, the most common form of illusion, isn't.

From Wikipedia:
An optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality.

That means when you stare at an object DIRECTLY, you are tricked into believing that it has different qualities than it does.

In this example, you aren't starting at the arrows... you are staring at a diffracted image of the arrows. The diffracted arrows REALLY do point in the opposite direction. There's no illusion here.

Consider this...

If I put a rose-tinted pane of glass in front of the arrows, would you consider that an optical illusion?

Would you think "Hey, those arrows were on white paper before, NOW the paper is pink! Mind blown! Optical illusion!'?

No, you understand that you are seeing the colour pink because that's the property of the pane of glass IN FRONT OF the white sheet.

If you put a white sheet in front of the arrows, would you think: "Hey, the arrows have disappeared? Optical illusion!"?

No, that's the property of the sheet in front of the arrows.

And so on...

Hopefully, that clarifies it for you...

Nicely shot and all, but there are several cuts in this. it absolutely is not a single shot.

There is a cut at around 2:50 mark, when the camera moves up to the helicopter, and then back down.

There is at least another one, very well disguised to be honest, at around the 4:25 mark when they move between the sheets hanging in the clothes line.

There could be more, but I noticed at least these two on a first viewing.

Someone at work brought these chocolate chip cookies in today. I asked her to email me the recipe since they were really good. So here you go...

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(makes 6 dozen cookies)

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 cups butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 (3.4 ounce) packages instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt, then set aside.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix powder until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets covered in parchment paper. Refrigerate dough between batches so the dough doesn't become too soft before baking.

3. Bake for approximately 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Could be more or less depending on your oven. Edges should be golden brown.

I've been here 30 years and in the good ole days, it would snow maybe every year and a half. Lately, it has snowed every year, sometimes twice or three times. What is scary is -- the MOUNTAINS still aren't getting much snow.

It isn't much snow, but I have a very steep driveway that is in the shade of 20 foot tall laurel hedges. If I don't shovel it off, I won't be able to drive out of my garage for a week or so. So the thinnest sheet is shovel worthy at my house.

We're in trouble, this world. I think our species will survive, because we are very adaptable. But it is going to be ugly ugly ugly.

We as a civilization always looked to Nero, fiddling as Rome burned, as the ultimate in self-absorption and mental illness. Now we have a planet full of Neros.

It is bad. And getting worse.

Made these last night-I call em:

Chewy Sugar Cookies (monster version)

2 3/4 cups flour (sifted with:)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder

I cup (2 sticks) salted, butter (softened)
1 1/2 cups whole cane sugar
1 egg
1tsp (or to taste) vanilla extract
3-6 tbsp buttermilk
some ground cinnamon, and some more sugar for later

sift dry ingredients into bowl
in a separate bowl, cream sugar, extract, egg, and a small glug of buttermilk until creamy
mix wet and dry ingredients and add just enough extra buttermilk to make the mix slightly sticky but not wet (or, the opposite of how you like your women)

NOW comes the monster part:

Add to dough, some pure grated coconut (unsweetened), dried cranberries, and fresh almonds that have been hit with the coffee grinder to chop and powder a bit)

Place the dough in the freezer while you preheat the oven to 375°F

on an un-greased cookie sheet, place small dollops of dough that has been rolled in some of the coconut/almond mix you set aside extra

on top of each dollop that you flatten slightly with a fork, brush-on some buttermilk on each dough-glob, then sprinkle with a sugar and a ground cinnamon mix

Bake for 8-10 minutes on second-to-top oven rack

Real panty-droppers these, bet ya can't eat just five

Everything virtual does not have to be this kind of choice, VoodooV-I'm no wimp, the process would work were it not continually hijacked by a mechanism that is both glaringly apparent and for a certain privileged few to tweak at their leisure while maintaining a simple yet elaborate ruse. 'Writing' someone in would not work and this cold-cut fact should also be glaringly apparent to anyone with the capacity for critical thought tinctured with a dash of common-sense. Elections are and have been simply an exercise in complacent self-approbation and self-deceit for some time now...going waaay back-The white-knights and villains are agreed, in every personality, every human breathing as all are capable of the worst atrocities and the infinite empathy and kindness. The checks-and-balances only work if everyone plays by the rule book and not the cheat-sheet.


Now, an intelligent breakdown of your reaction cloaked as some meaningful response:

'someones feeling attention deprived again, trolling and picking fights to overcompensate'

No-I'm not picking a fight, I'm picking at a soft-spot in a personality and calling attention to particular predictable rhetorical repetition in a manner which also predictably, causes these certain personalities to cry foul, troll (insert racist here, as those who cry racism are invariably the racists themselves) or any other convenient terms which halt the process of reason.

"If I thought there would be actual rational discourse, I would engage him." (here's your chance) 'But nope' (there's the cop-out and hasty retreat with the regular gang of supporters)

'It would just be noise' (perhaps to yourself, as this is yet another convenient dismissal of an alternative point of view or realization).

And bareboards, sorry if I cause you to la la la with fingers in your ears, I did nothing rather, your reaction as well connotes a predictable denial of the meat in my rant, as is Chaos calling out the mundane aspect of mistyped punctuation.

Haven't had a drop of alcohol when this was written earlier this morning, nor have I smoked the ganja for over 2 months...question mark, exclamation point.....and more than enough ....el;ipsis

As tired of the childish shit as y'all are of mine?? Yep-But I hold-out hope for communion and understanding, as we all play here together.

So are you 'glad' about the current president, whose rap sheet of abject failures trumps more than that of 2 dozen administrations in history? Not saying any other would have done more for the elite who put all presidents in place but seriously....What the FUCK has the not-black president done worth a fiddler's fuck bareboards? Your comment sounds like the same2 rhetoric taught the masses from years of programming and fantastic confabulation.

Gitmo? Name-Calling and cry-racism at any opportunity? Appointing complete cunts to czar posts? Expanding surveillance and promulgating police-state? Debt to $4.939 Trillion since taking office (not that we'd pay back any debt anyhow, another confabulate issue, completely meaningless)?
Nobel peace prize (meaningless)?
Cult of personality antics that would make any dictator green and covetous?
Media-whore first-lady?
Blah, blah, blah green energy after the BP spill?

A real piece of work, but so's frikkin' Mitt Mormonite

Jesus man, get a grip on that shit!?

Shit man, there's a long-ass rap-sheet of non-lethal mental illness that puts extreme sports to shame -Bleed yer heart out and feign concern for the human race with worry somewhere else there, Judgy McJudgerstein besides, more room for thoughtful, cautious types like yerself right??

Not entirely true, there is evidence of localised flooding around the arabian peninsula, however it pre-dates the chronology of the 'noah' period by thousands of years.

I cant recall the exact region, but it occured when the ice sheets that used to cover that area receded, it might have something to do with how the dead sea was formed? My memory is shaky on the specifics to be honest, but a giant flood did happen, albeit localised . Nothing to do with spooky sky ghosts or anything like that, just the end of the last ice age around the time that man and mammoth both walked the lands.

I think you're on the right track but have it backwards.

I think they were flat sheets the whole time but they're using a tilt-shift lens during the zoom shot to simulate depth of field and make it look like parts of the object are further away.

On the first one, the globe, there is writing on the sheet of paper "under" the globe, yet the perspective never changes; we never see a little bit more of the writing peek out or get obscured as the camera pans around. I'm sure we'd have seen a little bit of this if it were a real object.

*viral *commercial

I don't think they'll let the U.S. default now, nor do I think they will not raise the debt ceiling (But, again, who knows?). If they do, however, raise the ceiling, it will be another indication that there is no more capping the debt, it will grow and grow until the country has no choice but to default.

Interesting to remember, back at the beginning of the Reagan years, fiscal conservatives were "crying" about the debt being $1 trillion. That's nothing compared to what it is today. And it was Reagan (by way of his "Reaganomics") who decided that there was no problem with increasing the debt.
Writes Murray Rothbard (in 1981), in an article about how the U.S. should just default on the debt:

"Perhaps the most absurd argument of Reaganomists was that we should not worry about growing public debt because it is being matched on the federal balance sheet by an expansion of public 'assets'."

(I wonder what he would make of today's $16 trillion+ in U.S. debt?)

Predictably, as soon as Reagan went on a spending spree, fiscal "conservatives" stopped being so (not unlike the 'leftists' who stopped being anti-war as soon as Obama was elected).

It should also serve us to remember that it was the Democratic party that first considered itself the party of fiscal responsibility, at least with regards to Jefferson, Jackson, and Van Buren who all had a conscious plan to defund government but eventually failed for various historical reasons.

"It is for all these reasons that the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians (who, contrary to the myths of historians, were extraordinarily knowledgeable in economic and monetary theory) hated and reviled the public debt. Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson."

*dead
'Satellite photos of the Arctic taken by NASA in August 2012 and August 2013 show a 60 percent increase in the polar ice sheet, more than half the size of Europe, despite “realistic” predictions by climate scientists six years ago that the North Pole would be completely melted by now.'-Barbara Hollingsworth, CNS

Just found out today that the Canadian (or provincial) Gov now has an online sign up sheet to bypass those concerns. Pain for my lazy ass to do it but I will.