c'mon Michael, think

c'mon Michael, think

I have seen this same Michael Moore quote, from shortly after 9/11, a couple of times today (here's some more Moore):

"Many families have been devastated tonight. This is just not right. They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, D.C. and the planes' destination of California -- these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!"

Moore's premise is that the 9/11 terrorists carried out the attack to "get back at Bush". He then points out that that actual targets were states that had voted against Bush.

Moore sees the contradiction, but apparently cannot bring himself to face the conclusions of his own logic.

Logical statements are inherently non-contradictory: if an argument starts from premises (statements that are held as true) and logically progresses to a conclusion, there can be no contradictions. If contradictions occur, it means that either the logical method followed is flawed, or the premises themselves are flawed.

Michael Moore's irrational hatred of George Bush blinds him to the obvious conclusion of his own conundrum. If the terrorists were indeed intending to target states that had voted for Bush as a way of "getting back" at him (for some imagined insult, which is not made clear in the context of the short quote, if at all), then they botched their target selection. This beggars belief, as the near-simultaneous hijackings of four separate airliners implies plenty of very careful planning.

The targets were the twin towers of the world trade center, the Pentagon, and the fourth target was either the White House or the Capitol building. The selection of these particular targets implies an entirely different motivation than "getting back at Bush".

Not just one but both big towers of the world trade center. That's the same building al Quaeda tried to destroy 8 years earlier with a big bomb in the underground parking garage. Their persistence in bringing down the world trade center obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with Bush, but world trade in general and american economic might in particular.

The pentagon, the center of the US military, and itself one of the world's biggest office buildings, was also a deliberately-selected target. It doesn't take Sun Tzu to figure out what al-Quaeda hoped to acheive there; and again, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Bush.

The fourth plane, which ended up in a field in Pennsylvania,was on a heading that would have taken it to either the White house or the Capitol building. Here, Bush may arguably have been a target, particularly if the fourth plane had been heading for the White House - but that presupposes that Bush is in fact inside the White House at the time of the attack. If Bush himself had been the target, the terrorists would have (a) timed the attack for a day when Bush was known to be in Washington, and thus likely to be in the White House and (b) prioritized the order of the attacks differently; by the time the fourth plane was making its attack run, the world trade center had already been hit and the element of surprise was lost.

One can conclude that the terrorists did not blunder about aimlessly in selecting their targets. Therefore the flow of logic in Moore's statement is sound; and yet, there is a contradiction, which Moore so helpfully points out. Fortunately, Moore's position is based on a single premise, and since his logic is sound but arrives at a contradiction, the premise must be incorrect.

The premise was that the 9/11 terrorists killed themselves and thousands of innocent people because they hated George W. Bush. Just under the surface of that premise is an idea so palpable, one can almost read Moore's very thoughts: "because I hate George Bush, everyone must hate George Bush, so anything really bad that happens must be because people hate George Bush".

But the choice of targets indicate that it is not Bush himself that the terrorists hated enough to give up their lives, but America itself.

Maybe Michael Wilson is right.

gaze into the crystal ball

gaze into the crystal ball

Blogs have slowly been gaining in popularity over the last several years. Some of the more widely-read blogs are now viewed as equivalent to journalists and dozens are currently accredited and covering the Democratic convention.

Bloggers and journalists have a sort of symbiotic relationship right now. Journalists provide fodder for blogging, and bloggers provide extensive fact- and bias-checking for journalists.

But nothing lasts forever, and as the numbers of bloggers rise and blogging itself changes, the relationship of blogging to journalism will change.

Blogs are many things: online diaries, link collections, online photojournals, and of course editorial comment aplenty. That's today though. What will they be a few years down the road?

One hint lies in some of the more popular blogs like instapundit. In the right margin above his buttons and blogroll are several advertisements, as well as a tip jar. This is one of the key ways that blogs will change over the next year or two: more and more of the top blogs will have ads in the margins.

I look at my blog, and I see some comics, some editorials of my own, the Robot Guy News which mines 300 newspapers for top stories, and my blogroll which links to other blogs; other than getting paid for this by having ads and a tip jar, this page is pretty much an online newspaper in its own right. A very small newspaper, but you're reading it, aren't you?

I can see blogs in a year or two beginning to compete directly with newspapers for advertising revenue, particularly the top few dozen. Some people will be able to make blogging their primary occupation; basically editing and publishing their own newspaper several times a day. That will be the biggest change to the blogosphere, and it is made possible by the advertisements.

Hmmm.... think I'll look into Blogads.

addendum: I recalled the TV show Max Headroom sometime after I posted the above, and realized that bloggers can soon compete with television news as well; just so long as cellphone technology continues to improve. When you see bloggers regularly uploading video taken with a cellphone, live coverage of news stories as they happen, the days of bloggers competing with TV news will have arrived. And again, the key is advertising.

go for launch

go for launch

As expected, Burt Rutan announced the date of Scaled Composites official X-prize attempt: the first of at least two flights will occur on September 29, 2004; the second must be completed by October 13, 2004, in the same vehicle.

At the same news conference, Brian Feeney announced the rollout of the Wildfire rocket will be in Toronto on August 5, 2004, and that the da Vinci group will be making its X-prize attempts this fall. Too bad he wasn't more specific with a date.

simon-jestering the NYT

simon-jestering the NYT

It has been something that has peeved me for a while, the data-mining attempted by onlne newspapers like the New York Times. I usually don't register, as I don't feel it is any of their damn business what my name, email address, occupation, etc etc etc are. Now a solution has arrived: a way to bypass compulsory web registration. Just type in the name of the website you want to get into, and bugmenot gives you a valid login name and password.

Random Thoughts

Random Thoughts

My sister forwarded this to me today; credit may go to Sharon Pera, although that might just be the person who sent it to my sister... anyhow:


-- I used to eat a lot of natural foods until I learned that most people die of natural causes.

-- Gardening Rule: When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant.

-- The easiest way to find something lost around the house is to buy a replacement.

-- Never take life seriously. Nobody gets out alive anyway.

-- There are two kinds of pedestrians: the quick and the dead.

-- An unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys.

-- If quitters never win, and winners never quit, then who is the fool who said, "Quit while you're ahead?"

-- Health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

-- Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day; teach that person to use the Internet and they won't bother you for weeks.

-- Some people are like Slinkies . . . not really good for anything, but you still can't help but smile when you see one tumble down the stairs.

-- Have you noticed since everyone has a camcorder these days no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?

-- All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.

-- Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut saves you thirty cents?

-- In the 60's, people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.

-- Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.

-- AND THE # 1 THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: You read about all these terrorists - most of them came here legally, but they hung around on these expired visas, some for as long as 10 to 15 years. Now, compare that to Blockbuster: You are two days late with a video and those people are all over you. We should put Blockbuster in charge of immigration.

Concerto of Deliverance

Concerto of Deliverance

In her 1957 book Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand gives this description of a concerto:

"She sat listening to the music. It was a symphony of triumph. The notes flowed up, they spoke of rising and they were the rising itself,
they were the essence and the form of upward motion, they seemed to embody every human act and thought that had ascent as its motive.
It was a sunburst of sound, breaking out of hiding and spreading open. It had the freedom of release and the tension of purpose. It swept space clean, and left nothing but the joy of an unobstructed effort. Only a faint echo within the sounds spoke of that from which the music had escaped, but spoke in laughing astonishment at the discovery that there was no ugliness or pain, and there never had had to be.
It was the song of an immense deliverance."

The Concerto of Deliverance is a central theme running through the book. For decades, readers have only been able to hear that concerto in their imaginations.

That all changed on July 4, 2004. For an acquaintance of mine here in Calgary, Monart Pon, merely creating the symbol of the concerto in his imagination wasn't enough. He wanted to hear it. He wanted to play it on his CD player.

So, he commissioned the composer John Mills-Cockell to compose the concerto of deliverance, and the result is now available. I'll be picking up my copy early next month (I know Monart, so we'll probably meet face-to-face and I won't have to pay shipping charges), and at that time I'll post my own review. From what I have heard so far, it's pretty damn good.

environmentalists get it backwards

environmentalists get it backwards

(via Curmudgeon's Corner)
Friends of the Earth sent out a press release on the day of George Bush's announcement of the new Moon, Mars, and Beyond initiative. They basically argue against going into space until earth's problems are all solved. They also rail against Bush for (rightly) not ratifying Kyoto.

In the process, they miss the whole point. The new space exploration vision is NOT "spending huge sums of money sending people to Mars". That money would get spent anyhow; NASA has spent half a trillion dollars over the last thirty years to do no more than go around in circles. And it will get about the same amount over the next 30 years; the EPA would be defunded before NASA. At least the new space initiative provides NASA with a direction.

And it is a direction that embraces private enterprise. That equals infrastructure, both here on the ground and in earth orbit; it is the simplest way to keep overall costs down.

This infrastructure would develop alongside the moon, mars, and beyond projects, and would enable other projects. Most notably among these other projects is what ought to be the Holy Grail of the environmentalist movement: one or more space-based solar power satellites.

Such satellites would be extremely large and flimsy, and would of necessity be mostly made up of material mined off the earth, derived from near-earth asteroids and lunar material. It would simply not be economical to launch all that mass through the earth's atmosphere, climbing a steep gravity well.

Energy collected at the satellite would be beamed down to earth in the form of microwaves (which do not interact with the atmosphere) to a "rectenna" on the ground. The rectenna is merely a wire mesh with lots of diodes, suspended above the ground. Light and rain could easily pass right through the rectenna, and the land underneath could be used as farmland with no risk to plant, animal, or human life. The rectenna directly converts microwaves into electricity.

Such a satellite would forever free us from the use of fossil fuels. It would also free us from the use of hydroelectric or nuclear power. It would provide the energy to crack water for the production of hydrogen for automobiles.

But the only way such a satellite will come to pass is if the power of the free market can be brought to bear. That is the most important part of the new space initiative, the private sector. And the private sector cannot get into the space business unless NASA's priorities change from what they have been for the last 30 years.

about damn time

about damn time

Alan Boyle reports that HR3752 is one step closer to passage.

bypassing NASA

bypassing NASA

While Congress debates whether to fund the new NASA space initiative, private companies are shooting for the moon.

Hawking's riddle solved

Hawking's riddle solved

For thirty years, Stephen Hawking has held to the belief that all information about a subatomic particle's quantum states is lost when it passes the event horizon of a black hole. This contradicts standard quantum theory, which holds that such information cannot be totally lost. He believes he has now solved this riddle, which has vexed him since 1974. A detailed paper on the subject is expected next month.

two-horse race, at least

two-horse race, at least

The X-prize Foundation has scheduled a press conference for next Tuesday morning, and both Burt Rutan of Scaled Composites and Brian Feeney of the da Vinci Project will be attending. Either or both may be announcing an official X-Prize attempt for the end of September.

OK, that's it then

OK, that's it then

I have finally got this blog looking the way I want it to. The new Robot Guy News section is finally working properly, I have lots of comics at the bottom of the page, and all the links in my blogroll are updated and alphabetized. In the words of Loki in the movie Dogma, "Never let it be said that your anal-retentive attention to detail never yielded positive results".

I don't remember

I don't remember

On this day 35 years ago, I was nine and a half months old. I'm pretty sure I wasn't aware of much more than my mother. So, I missed seeing my fraternity brother Neil Armstrong and his partner Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon.

I don't remember much about the last Apollo missions either; I think I was four or five years old by the time they were all over.

So for me, Apollo was just history. For the people a few years older than me, say those in their 40s and early 50s today, Apollo 11 was a defining moment in their lives. Their generation was going to build cities on the moon and have flying cars and robots would do all the work. It was going to be just like the Jetsons.

The flying car dream obviously hasn't come to pass. It was based on a false premise; that Apollo was pitting capitalism against communism in the race for space.

Apollo was borne out of a race against the Soviet Union to control the high strategic ground of space: clear superiority in this race would be apparent with a landing of men on the moon. But rather than pitting the American economic strength against the USSR's military strategy of space development, the USA also chose a military route in the form of NASA.

With the military goal acheived, NASA inevitably devolved into a bureaucracy. Its very structure meant that it was finished from the moment Armstrong and Aldrin returned safely home. The death rattle has been expensive and painful to watch, more than three decades of literally going around in circles.

President Bush's new space initiative may help to change the way Americans access space. But if it is stalled now, or if NASA itself too forcefully resists the necessary changes, then the agency will continue to ossify.

The initiative is not just about NASA though, and therein lies its strength; the inclusion of the free market in space is crucial. It is only the free market that will actively seek improvements in efficiency, only the free market that will pursue the strategies necessary for long-term profit, only the free market that will ultimately drive the cost of space access down.

And the free market has a toe in the door. Private suborbital flight is a reality, for a fraction of the cost of government-funded suborbital flight. Private manned orbital missions are a few years down the road, but they are coming. Each successful flight will bring down the cost of all the rest, both due to amortization of development costs over many flights and the reduced insurance loads that come with good flight records.

Suborbital flights are the toe in the door, orbital flights are a foot in the door, regular orbital flights mean the door is torn off its hinges. And it won't take another thirty five years.

Screw the CRTC, redux

Screw the CRTC, redux

The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Corporation (how's that for an unwieldy handle) has arbitrarily shut down the most popular radio station in Quebec city, refusing to renew their license. Jay Jardine thinks that CHOI should keep broadcasting, putting the government in the position of taking them down by force of arms. Andrew Coyne has more - and here's a bit from me, from about a month ago.

homeland security at work

homeland security at work

I'm sure everyone in the USA is sleeping soundly at night, knowing that the country's foremost nuclear weapons research lab is incapable of securing classified CDs and floppies.

Arafat's House of Cards

Arafat's House of Cards

The power structure around Yassir Arafat is starting to crumble; Palestinians are openly saying that Arafat is an obstacle to reform.

Hawking continues to surprise

Hawking continues to surprise

It is not very often that one sees a great scientist change his mind about a long-held concept central to his theories. This is what makes Stephen Hawking's reversal on information loss at the event horizon so astounding; not that Dr. Hawking was wrong, but that he is able to publicly acknowledge the longstanding error and correct it, while adding to our understanding of black hole formation in the process. His stature only increases as a result. 
 
 

still in the running

still in the running

Brian Feeney is featured in Wired News. According to the article, Feeney is hinting at a launch by the end of September - about the same time frame that Mike Melville of Scaled Composites hinted at in an interview earlier this month. The Ansari X-Prize could be a real race; both teams may be making attempts within days of each other.

still tinkering

still tinkering
 
I missed seeing the cartoons at the bottom of the page, and they really didn't take that long to load, so I brought them back.  Something else is making the page take a long time to load; I suspect the news ticker.  I'll keep tinkering with this until I get it the way I want it.
 
update: yep, it's the news ticker.  I'm going to leave it out for now, and see if I can find another small ticker; one just a little faster to use would be ideal.  Is there any way to have a news ticker without using Java?

update update:  Well, that went well.  I got rid of the news ticker, and replaced it with my own news page.  It's right in there under the "News" heading, the brand-spankin' new Robot Guy News.  It is the same headline service that I was using before, only now all the headlines are presented on a separate page.  That went so well, I may divide it up into space, robotics, general science, and other sections, each with its own link under my News heading.

update update update, last one, I promise: Well, how about that?  What started out as me being dissatisfied with the amount of time required to load this blog, led to a much better blog.  I now have my own little newsmagazine, culled from the headlines of over 300 newspapers.  Just click on the links under Robot Guy News to be redirected to the appropriate news page; the page is generated when you click on the link.
 
As a bonus, my blog loads much faster and I was able to bring all of my cartoons back; Mostly Business rejoins Day by Day, Stan'n'Isaac, and Toy Trunk Railroad, as of today.  Hmmm... I might even add more cartoons.

Oil Shmoil

Oil Shmoil

Mark Steyn agrees with me:

"Ask why the Saudis are allowed to kill thousands of Americans and still get the kid-glove treatment, and you’re told the magic word: oil. Here’s my answer: blow it out your Medicine Hat. The largest source of imported energy for the United States is the Province of Alberta. Indeed, whenever I’m asked how America can lessen its dependence on foreign oil, I say it’s simple: annex Alberta."

it's not that hard

it's not that hard

Relativity, like any other subject, can be made arbitrarily difficult to learn. On the other hand, with a little bit of effort, it is possible to explain relativity in words of four letters or less.

Chasing Stars in New Mexico

Chasing Stars in New Mexico

Starchaser Industries, an Ansari X-Prize contestant, has chosen to leave the heavy launch-regulation requirements of Britain behind and is moving to new Mexico.

first class

first class

The businessmen who traded 8 first-class airline seats to eight soldiers flying home from Iraq for two weeks of R&R were the epitome of class.

It is a small gesture, but what a difference to the way soldiers returning from Vietnam were treated.

If one does not like war, then that is one thing; to take that dislike of war out on those who are powerless to stop it, namely average grunt soldiers, is a serious misdirection of anger. It is the politicians who choose whether to go to war, it is the military brass that decides on how that war is to be conducted, and it is the average grunt that merely does what he is told to do.

Average grunts have absolutely no choice in the matter; when one joins the army, one loses many rights that citizens take for granted, such as the right to quit and seek other employment. This was even worse in Vietnam, as soldiers were selected by the draft system, and they had no choice as to whether to become soldiers or not (other than going to jail or fleeing the country). At least today's US army is a volunteer force, but that doesn't change the fact that once you join the army, you are the property of the government.

So, if one has a problem with the way a war is conducted, it is the military brass that deserves the criticism, and the politicians who control them. If one is upset with the fact of a war, the proper direction to vent is towards the politicians, the ones who choose whether to go to war or not.

Those businessmen who gave up their seats surely made the flight home for those troops a memorable one, and word will filter back to the guys still in Iraq. And with 8 battle-hardened US troops in the first-class cabin, that was one flight with a zero chance of a hijacking attempt.

not over yet

not over yet

Today, assassins killed the governor of the Iraqi provice of Nineveh, Osama Youssef Kashmoula.

The country is still not stable, and likely will not be so until well after elections are held and most of the US troops have gone home. Even then, there will still be lots of troops from other nations: Prime Minister Iyad Allawi has asked Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Morocco, and Egypt to send troops to help out.

This is a good move on the Iraqi PM's part. Getting India and Pakistan to work together to fight the common enemy (terrorist factions) will have enormous benefits in stabilizing those two nations relations with each other, and in presenting a united front against terrorism across the middle east and Indian subcontinent. Also note he asked Morocco and Egypt for troops - but not Lybia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Oman, Yemen, or Kuwait. Nor Canada for that matter.

A Distinct Viewpoint

A Distinct Viewpoint
 
I was googling around today and I found this gem, a viewpoint of history in Alberta that intersperses a family history with the major political and Catholic Church events. It is very well-researched and easy to read, full of lots of great information.

expensive space junk

expensive space junk

Jeffrey F. Bell of SpaceDaily calls the international space station - and NASA's competence - into question. He refers to the ISS as the International Space Scrap Yard, noting the multiple failures of parts that had been ostensibly designed to last for ten years after completion, failures that in some cases have occurred after only two or three years. Money shot:

"Shuttle and ISS are so fundamentally wrong in their basic concept and design that even the best engineers in the world couldn't save those programs -- and clearly the best engineers in the world no longer work for NASA."

pancakes from a possible future PM

pancakes from a possible future PM

Every year at this time, Calgary turns into a ten-day party. Yep, it's Stampede time again.

The entire city gets right into it. One of the main traditions associated with the Stampede is the Stampede Breakfasts, in which various city businesses and organizations feed thousands of people breakfast of pancakes, sausages, and fried potatoes - for free. There are several Stampede Breakfasts held on each day of the Stampede, at various locations throughout the city (as well as a few of the suburbs).

Today, I went to the breakfast put on by the CBC studio. When I finally got to the front of the line (after about an hour of waiting - there were over a thousand people there), I was very surprised to see none other than Stephen Harper, the current Official Opposition leader in Parliament, flipping pancakes.

He's a lot bigger than I thought he was - just over six feet tall, probably about 200 pounds. Somehow he always looked like a smaller guy on TV, more around my size (5'8", 175 pounds).

Jeebus, I couldn't believe how nervous I was to talk to him. I managed to stammer out something like "You keep their (the Liberals) feet to fire this coming year, y'hear?" - he told me he would do what he could.

It was very odd to see the leader of the Conservative party volunteering his time for the CBC, which treated him and his party very badly in this past election (the CBC has, over the years, become the propoganda arm of the Liberal party). I know that in his position I sure wouldn't have helped the CBC out - I guess it goes to show that he is a bigger man than me in more ways than one.

with a little spin....

with a little spin....

A team at Cambridge-MIT Institute has developed a way to make continuous Carbon nanotube thread at a rate of several centimeters per second. From what I understand of the process, a Carbon-rich aerogel is created in a special spinning furnace chamber, then the resulting nanofibers are wound into a thread on a spindle.

The Cambridge team is nowhere near the theoretical maximum tensile strength of nanotubes, but they expect to increase the strength of the thread by an order of magnitude in the next year.

This is fantastic news for anyone interested in a space elevator as a low-cost, heavy-lift, earth-to-orbit alternative to rockets. For a space elevator to work, a very strong material is required: a tensile strength of at least 65 GPa at a minimum. Carbon nanotubes have a theoretical maximum of 300 GPa, so there is plenty of margin to make the material stronger and stronger once we get past 65.

The big thing though is the length of fibres that will make up the space elevator "ribbon". Industrial processes such as this spinning technique are essential to producing a ribbon in excess of 100 thousand km long (it will pass right through geostationary earth orbit, with the ~60000 km beyond GEO acting as counterweight to the 35000 or so km hanging below GEO).

yoink

yoink

While I enjoyed reading the Stan'n'Isaac and the Toy Trunk Railroad cartoons on this blog, they simply make the blog take too long to load. So, I have removed them from the bottom of the page. Hopefully this will make things load faster; my preliminary tests have worked well.

I'll still keep Day By Day at the top of the blog though, at least for the time being; I find that I have become quite attached to the characters.

creativity and chemicals

creativity and chemicals

Claire Wolfe has been working on a movie script, and in an effort to get over a creative wall, made an exception to her rule against writing while impaired.

I can confirm that a chemically-induced altered state can be extremely helpful in creative endeavours. I have been programming computers for 2/3 of my life, and at a rough estimate I would say that about half of the code I have written over my lifetime has been written under the influence of alcohol. Not just a little tipsy mind you, or even just a little buzz on... but absolutely shitfaced, staggering, falling-over drunk.

The nature of computer programming being what it is, and in particular in my preferred programming languages (the many flavours of Assembly Language), one simply cannot turn out crap and expect it to work. Even so, when programming while impaired I turned out some absolutely amazing code (did I mention how humble I am?), such as the printed circuit board CAD program I wrote for my Commodore Vic-20 about a decade ago (which even today works better and faster for me on that old 333kHz computer than any PC-based CAD program).

Of course, nothing comes without a price; in the case of alcohol, that price is one's health. Had I not stopped drinking altogether seven years ago (as of June 27th), I would very likely not be here right now.
It was an either-or proposition for me: either lose that little bit of extra "creative juice" or lose my life.

Now I just pray that I never get writer's block.

like woodstock, only nerdy

like woodstock, only nerdy

... but I mean that in a good way. Check out Alan's Mojave Airport Weblog, with some great photos of the activity at the Mojave spaceport on June 21.

Kindersley, Saskatchewan can attract this kind of a crowd for its first spaceflight, if they promote it right.

hey...

hey...

I totally missed this a few weeks ago; it is definitely worth a look. It says that UNMOVIC confirms that weapons of mass destruction were smuggled out of Iraq; indeed they are now spread worldwide, with the recent thwarted attack in Jordan just the tip of the iceberg. Money quote:

"One wonders where CNN and USA Today think twenty tons of nerve gas and sarin came from: Chemical Weapons-Mart?"

Scary Alberta Health Care Reform

Scary Alberta Health Care Reform

Yesterday, Premier Ralph Klein released the report detailing the changes to funding for health care in this province. Some good points, some that will not fly.

These scary changes include adding $700 million to the health care budget, and raising provincial income taxes.

BOO!

Did you jump, Ontario? Is it the end of health care in Canada? Would a "scary" Stephen Harper have "dismantled" your health-care system, just like Ralph Klein is doing in Alberta?

Make no mistake, Ralph Klein is going to get a thrashing at the polls in the provincial election this fall. Most of this stuff will get implemented anyhow, but he gave the CBC and the Liberal party ammunition in the federal election, a chance to connect Alberta-boy Klein with Alberta-boy Harper and demonize both. All this over a report Harper hadn't even seen and which isn't provincial Progressive-Conservative party policy yet anyhow.

Note that the provincial Progressive-Conservative party and the national Conservative party are entirely separate entities. So PC party policy cannot be considered Conservative policy. In Ontario, provincial Liberal party policy is clearly separate from federal Liberal party policy; Ontario voters are smart enough to separate the two parties, even though they have the same name.

But Ralph is toast for more than that; he is leaning too far left for Albertans. A party will come up to the right of the PCs in this election - and it may be a separatist party.