StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Flat taxes with an income floor are progressive. A 25% flat tax with a $20K income floor means someone making $20K pays zero, someone making $40K pays 12.5%, someone making $80K pays 18.75% and someone making $200K pays 22.5% (average rate).

35 hours of lectures? In first year, we had 6 courses, so 18 hours of lectures a week (3 hours each). What program was that? I don't think the 1st year Mechs (who had the most lectures in first year) had that many in 2002. Chemical engineering, she started in '97 and completed the 5 year co-op prog...

My preferred definitions: Science is the creation, testing and revision (or rejection) of hypotheses and theories. Engineering is the application of scientific principles (usually from the physical sciences) to practical technical problems. These are more activities than professions. Most engineers ...

Never been to NL, the Territories or the Gap (Sask.).

My guess is that drivers who've taken lessons or courses are younger on average than those who haven't. The correlation between age and accidents is pretty strong (hence the much higher insurance premiums for young drivers).

What a mess. No way I'm voting PC, even with the backpedaling on creationism. The correct answer to the "it's not fair that Catholic schools get funding, but not Jewish/Islamic/etc" problem is to have one secular school system, not a segregated patchwork system. Their kids can learn bullsh...

Martin Luther's Seven Point Plan (written about 300 years before Origin of Species ): First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and Ch...

Eh? As far as I can tell by clicking on the link for the specific store on the 7-Eleven website, there is only a single Kwik-E-Mart in BC, located in Coquitlan, which is a small suburban city bordering Vancouver, and is often considered to be part of Vancouver itself (probably why both citys' names...

Polls from the US typically break down as roughly 50% YEC, with only 10% accepting purely natural evolution. The remaining 40% generally answer something along the lines of "I believe in evolution, but God did it". This category actually includes a wide variety of positions, including IDer...

A fourth season wasn't optioned by HBO and the show concluded in August 2006, though there are two feature-length installments to tie up loose ends to air sometime this year. Sort of. The series creator was offered a 4th season of 6 episodes, which he apparently declined in favour of the TV-movie o...

V for Vendetta - I was pretty excited to see this one, but barely made it to the end. Should have known better after Matrix 2/3. How is it comparable to the Matrix exactly? It has the Wachowskis directing it, sure. But none of the material in the screenplay is theirs. Infinitely better source mater...

V for Vendetta - I was pretty excited to see this one, but barely made it to the end. Should have known better after Matrix 2/3. How is it comparable to the Matrix exactly? It has the Wachowskis directing it, sure. But none of the material in the screenplay is theirs. Infinitely better source mater...

All-time, this would be a long bloody list, so from recent years: Dreamgirls - I was stunned that a show about Motown could have such wretched music. Made it about halfway through this one. I am completed mystified by the critics' love for this movie. Everything - soundtrack, acting, direction, dial...

194 cm, about 6-4. Height is all fun and games until it's time for a transoceanic flight in economy.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Whisky (latest love: Caol Ila 12yo), dark ales, Caesars, vodka w/ lime. Amaretto or a Caucasian when I want something sweeter. I like wine with a good meal, but am not a connoisseur at all.

no Phil Hartman, Because way back in 1998 Phil Hartman was murdered by his deranged wife and it must've been the moment when The Simpsons changed on a fundamental level and not for the better... :( I'm really not sure what you're driving at, here. I know Phil Hartman was murdered. His loss is just ...

My B.A.Sc. was in materials engineering, with a focus on physical and process metallurgy (as opposed to extractive metallurgy or nonmetallic/composite materials). My Ph.D. and postdoc work was in thermomechanical processing and high-temperature softening (recovery/recrystallization) kinetics, mostly...

It's been in steady decline since about Season 8, but I stopped watching around Season 11. Lame celebrity cameos (Kid Rock?), catchphrases driven into the ground, no Phil Hartman, pointless absurdism.. it's become the sort of tired, awful profit machine that the show would have mercilessly mocked in...

Isn't the vast majority of Canadian electricity generated via non-carbon means? I have no idea on the percentage of coal/hydro/nuclear/other plants that are used in Canada. Very roughly, it's 15% nuclear, 25% fossil and 60% hydro, with maybe 1-2% other (solar, wind, etc.). Even so, power generation...

My wife has started a B.Sc. in psychology (heading in the research direction) and I have been pleasantly surprised with the rigour in at least some aspects. It's true, the 100-level material is often high-school grade, and there's enough soft bullshit even in the 200/300s that someone taking psych a...

I was lucky I decided to bail on the Canucks game at the end of regulation. Watching west coast games from the eastern time zone blows.

Still, awesome game. It's not often you see a goalie give up 4 goals in a game and end up with a .947 SV% and a 1.74 GAA.

If they haven't tortured the British prisoners, it's only because they fear the consequences. They did torture a Canadian journalist to death after all. I knew family friends of Zahra Kazemi when I lived in Montreal. At the time, they were optimistic that the response to her murder might accelerate...

I fully expect that they have been treating them just as the US treats prisoners. I sincerely doubt they've been physically mishandled at all, or even threatened with immediate harm. But you can bet your ass that they've been told that if they don't confess and play nice for the cameras (and in the...

What part of plain American English in Reagan's quote did you not understand? Err... I understood all of of it (and even managed to quote a whole sentence!). I simply lack your ideological commitment to a moronic black-and-white interpretation like "conscripted WWII Germans were also victims&q...