onoway

This (hopefully) is a naive question..is that truly in the works? After people came out in support of torture at Guantanamo and the stuff that was spouted during the run up to the last (and this) election I am able if not willing to believe it..Surely that would be against some sort of constitutional right to life and liberty, if not the pursuit of happiness? I know that the US has/had its own versions of our privacy BillC30 (which has been sent back to committee for revision after Canadians finally stood up and said oh no you don't) in PIPA and SOPA but this would be a gigantic step into active warfare against their citizenry. Well at the moment...the Canadian border is still largely unfenced...we got a lot of really good people during the Viet Nam years coming for extended visits with or without official sanction. What a world we are leaving for our kids and their kids...

What was the religious basis for Genghis Khan's foray into Europe? Or Alexander the Great expanding his empire? Alexander has never been shown to my knowledge to have tried to whip up a frenzy of enthusiasm for a war to spread the word about Zeus. Such things were always taught here as a matter of: prestige, politics, land, loot and because they wanted to and nobody could stop them. Some people just like fighting. Perhaps it isn't so much that religion condones and supports war so much as it is such a handy platform for overly ambitious men to use to gain support from a largely uneducated public who have been trained to listen to "authorities" -parents, teachers, policemen, and of course, religious leaders. Also, frequently, from relatives who have been in the forces themselves. God & Country are pretty much interchangeable symbols for quite a few people. The rub comes from the religious leaders not stepping up to the plate and saying, hang on, that's not part of this..though I suppose if they did they would generally end up dead as did the nuns and priests in any number of countries such as Salvador. One of the unfortunate developments over the years is that now leaders never leave the comfort of their homes to send people off to war. Even if they were behind the lines, they always were expected to be there in days gone by. Genghis Khan didn't sit on his backside and wave to the cavalry as they headed off to war. As warfare has got more sophisticated, it has become safer and safer for men to send other people off to war at no potential jeopardy to themselves. If anyone who wanted to start a war had to be there too, and be if not equally but certainly at risk of being shot or having a bomb land on his head, there might be less enthusiasm on the part of leaders to start wars. Though come to think of it, that may be one of the strong attraction that terrorist leaders have for young men, they themselves are at risk, they aren't all clearly sitting in a safe unreachable room with air conditioning and more than enough food and clean water and access to whatever they want at any time. Which leader is showing more commitment to "The Cause"? Anyway, off topic sorry

A friend was telling me how difficult figuring out what to have for lunch can be. She works and says she feels like she's been stuck in a rut. I'm couldn't come up with anything off the top of my head that helped, so I thought I'd ask what other people like for everyday lunches?

You know nothing whatever about me or what I believe and yet you feel free to scream I have it coming to be insulted, which is about the same reaction I would expect from a small time backwoods revival preacher who was confronted with someone he believed to be talking about people evolving from monkeys. You seem to be incapable of holding a discussion without bringing it down to the personal level , which is just ..well .. boring.

Perhaps less insulting terms might lead to a more interesting discussion. The attitude of superiority often demonstrated by atheists imo, shows those particular atheists to be as close minded about anything anyone might say on the other side as any fundamentalist from the deep south (or Alberta, for that matter). Which suggests as much a clinging to the faith that there is no god of any sort as anyone who as devoutly believes there is. Since we don't KNOW the universe as it really is, but are constantly making new discoveries we might find out if we could live long enough, that there is indeed a consciousness of a sort unimaginable to us at work..the sort of problem a fruit fly might have trying to imagine what humans were up to for example. So both sides would be both right and wrong. I think that the world really really needs to get over the "Them vs Us" mentality.

You might be interested in this article written by a Dr Thomas Gold of Cornell University http://amasci.com/freenrg/newidea1.html There are numerous examples of scientists who have been ridiculed and worse for results outside the "expected". One such is Dr Linus Pauling who came out with a study that an injectable vitamin C program had been effective treating certain types of cancer. Although at that point in time, he was already a Nobel winner, his research was dubbed quackery and he was considered to have "lost it" so to speak. However many years later, the Mayo clinic is reported to have run a study using his exact protocol and has found that indeed it is getting results. So it might be a moot question about the benignity of science vs religion..how many people may have died in anguish as a result of the scientific community's refusal to consider something "too simple" as possibly the answer to a difficult question? Also, science has brought us the atomic bomb and germ warfare and agent orange and GMO seeds and newly sophisticated ways to torture as well as heart transplants and hot water heaters and mousetraps. As well as being the vehicle for such horrors as the inquisition, religion has brought some sense of being cared for to people otherwise in hopelessness and despair, has given comfort to people who are dying, given a sense of purpose to lives such as that of Mother Teresa, literacy before schools were universal,improved living conditions and social change for many, if not for the women who want to be able to control their pregnancies. Many early scientist were either monks or certainly had strong religious ties..Copernicus, Linnaeus, Gregor Mendel (Linnaeus was ordained, and Mendel was a monk). So I think it's unfortunate that there is this black and white view of science vs religion such as you offer. I was watching a video a few weeks ago of the Dalai Llama, and he was talking about how they are working closely with scientists to try to learn how some of the Buddhist monks apparently disprove some "laws of nature". So again, religion and science certainly can and do co-exist with people of open mind and good intent.

I still cannot get in...tried both web and download only got the refused message twice otherwise it just sits there

I froze up on BBO today and finally disconnected as I couldnt play, but when I tried to get back in nothing would happen for ages and then I would get a "connection refused, error 4" . Is it something I said? If so I'm sorry.....or was BBO just having some troubles today?

For anyone who thought I was being silly about the degree to which the government would like to monitor their citizens in Canada, I would like to offer this for their consideration. http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2012/02/14/technology-online-surveillance-bill.html Way back when the FLQ was rampaging about and Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act to "combat terrorism" there was a huge hue and cry about the loss of civil liberties. That was largely muffled when Pierre LaPorte (If I remember the name correctly) who wasn't even a particularly "important" civil servant, was abducted and murdered . What the Act basically allowed was the arrest and detention indefinitely and without trial or even formal charges being laid, of anyone suspected or accused of belonging to the FLQ (or any such designated group). It made the whole country a sort of Guantanamo Bay.A common comment of the time went something like, the apartheid government of South Africa and other such governments must have been green with envy at the legal freedoms it gave the government. Along with some people actually thought to belong to the FLQ, various people who had given the governments of the day some flak, were also rounded up. Eventually everything got sorted out and things settled down, but the WMA as far as I know, still sits there ready for use. The problems inherant in this Bill are obvious in terms of civil liberties. The minister who is talking in the video clip about respecting privacy, transparency and accountability is a member of the government which is known for arbitrarilly closing debates, firing their own appointee for overseeing the rights of veterans when he actually started doing the job he had been entrusted to, and being the most secretive government we have had for a very long time if ever. Among other things. I mourn for my country.

Well most of the BBO mail messages are really as a result of the members not reading the news items and other information on the website. If we get a bunch of people asking the same question it's easier to message everyone than dealing with 1700 or so people individually. Occassionally there is a misclick and something intended only for the members online at the time actually goes to the mail. That said, we do send the results of the team matches to everyone. It seems a good thing to give some recognition to the winning teams which support the club by playing in the team match series. I think "dozens" is something of an exaggeration though :).

Feels a bit funny posting this as I am involved with helping to run it but but..(full disclosure as they say B-))The private BBO Intermediate and Advanced Club has a friendly membership. We have quite a number of advanced and some expert members who drop by from time to time and are also sometimes to be found playing in the team matches, but admittedly most of the membership are intermediates with ambitions. So if you are up for that it is a nice club and everyone works hard to keep it that way. The only thing is that although we have a big membership, aside from a core group we don't have many who play in the club so it can be difficult at times to find a game. We have a tourney once a week at present (Sunday evening) and are just finishing up teams series, another set to start on Saturday March3 at 8 pm NY time OR Sunday March4 10:30 am NY time. We usually have some strong players in the teams,especially in the Sunday series, and would welcome some new strong teams to give them some challenge. We would like to see more people playing in the club as well of course!

If you are really concerned about inflated self ratings, some clues to help blow their cover; 1) look at their profile and beware of people who simultaneously have "expert" and "stayman" on it (a surprising number of them!) or/and 2) if you really care a lot, look up their hand stats. The last can still be misleading as unless they play in tourneys it's hard to know if they are just among the best of the bunnies, as it were. Or you can consider if it's really all that important in the larger scheme of things. As far as a "qualifying" test goes: I know a number of people who don't play "modern" bridge.They would definitely be labelled as beginners by any test demanding knowlege of even such things as transfers. However, put them at a table vs advanced players and they will play rings around most of their opps. Admittedly none I know regularly play duplicate but when they do they usually finish in the top 5% or so. It's interesting that nobody here mentions or seems to object to the people who UNDERrate their level, people who certainly qualify as expert and instead modestly announce "novice". Maybe the bushwhacked bunnies don't post in the forums.

I found this quite a refreshing video..whether climate change is caused by people or not it's a terrific approach.

I certainly don't think that Canadians have any cause to point fingers at the U.S. At least when they had a President clearly doing wrong they could get rid of him whereas we were stuck with a Prime Minister who was running at what, 2% approval from the public? That was when I lost any sense of "our system works better". People here are just as likely to vote the party their daddy always did just as much as they are in the States. People here can still be spooked by labels and are just as afraid of anything they're not familiar with and so just as likely to figure the devil you think you know is better than the devil you don't. They're just as likely to vote in whoever tells them what they want to hear even though if pressed a little they admit they don't believe a word of any of it. It was interesting to me how many people here were rabid supporters of Obama and said something along the lines of; if he can pull it off in the States maybe it isn't too late for us to look for effective change here. Our government is just as much out of control as any other you might care to name, really, it's only that Harper hasn't really flexed muscles very much yet. Canada's not at all the free country that it used to be and that people believe it still to be. It's just that we haven't had the full weight of just how much we have lost since the Mulronney years laid on us yet.

If you notice that was the single example with a human sitting west so who knows what the 2nt was supposed to be, it may even have been a misclick. That one ended up in 7♥-1

I very rarely play in Main, almost always in IAC unless in a tourney or playing with specific friends who don't belong to the club. Also I am using download version with the settings on about the middle tending to the thinking side. If you set them much further over it can take forever for a hand to play. Sometimes as it is GIB contemplates a trick for 20 or 30 seconds even if only one possible card TO play. So perhaps, then, my GIBS are actually just "thinking" more than the basic bots that most people likely buy. That is FINALLY an explanation that makes sense to me. Thank you.

I was wondering if once a hand has been played several times if GIB adjusts the bidding? As in do the odds somehow change? Many many times there will be a whole lot of tables with 3 GIBS and a person and the bidding will start out the same, the person being silent throughout, but my GIBS arrive at a totally unique contract. Like this one today:[hv=pc=n&s=s542h974dq872cj73&w=sak83hj6dj9cakqt9&n=sqt6ha3dt543c8654&e=sj97hkqt852dak6c2]399|300[/hv] Bidding went: (North opened) pass 1♥ pass 2♣ pass 2♥ pass 2♠ pass 2NT pass 4nt 6nt pass pass pass At the time I played the hand there had been 14 other tables which had played the hand, all with 3 GIBS and one person, all but one the person sitting south. The 13 tables with the human sitting south ALL (except mine!) ended up in 4!H +2 (the one with a human west 7♥-1). It's very disconcerting when the GIBS do this sort of thing. One morning I had a whole string of them, with me on the losing end of them all. THAT was highly discouraging.

You might find this an interesting TED talk

It's been a while and I have tried the web version again and still prefer the download. Someone in a previous post says it's possible to see who is kibbing. Aside from looking up individual players and being told where they are, I have no idea either as a kibber or player how to see who is kibbing at the table on the web version. The chat is still confusing as it is far too easy to send it to the wrong person with things popping up in different spots instead of being contained within the one chat area,The reply area for chat is annoyingly situated and sized. Chat is on the bottom for the download too but it doesn't seem as awkward to use, for one thing you can bring the chat reply area up from the bottom on the download version, for another it's much larger. The cards are too big for the table area - finally figured out why they seemed just wrong, they seem about 1/3 again as big as on the download version.It feels to me like playing with dinner plates. It's still not as easy to find what you need to find and I dislike having to jump through hoops to go to a club. I don't care if there are no open seats in the club, I want to see who is playing there and maybe kib while waiting for an opening, and I don't wish to discuss it with the computer. OTOH the web version has some bonuses. I like the way things (table size if not proportional card size) are adjustable and that helps a good deal with the chat size area which was a previous beef. Someone had to explain that that was possible and how to do it though, which is the sort of thing I mean when I say that the web version is not as easy to get around as the download version. I would never have especially noticed the miniscule white bars and wondered if they were useful for something. It occurs to me that there might be some sort of link when you start to log into BBO on the web version which explains where stuff is..it might be useful to have such a link inside the site so as to be able to look things up - how to add another TD to a team match for example..something that several regular web users were sure was not possible. (I now know how thanks to a forums question and response). You likely never quite expected that you would do such a fine job with the original version of BBO, Fred, that people would become such fans that they would never want to leave it! Has this become an example of "be careful what you wish for?" :P

The point is not where the meter is installed, obviously. The point is that effectively you have them IN your house when they are communicating directly and seperately with your appliances. That's the part I object to. I don't see that it's anybody's business if your TV took x amount of power at 9:00pm or your dishwasher took y amount of power at 2 am. All that the power company needs to know is that at 9 pm SOMETHING took x amount of power; it's none of their business what. Then there is less possibility of them garnering other information which is where the rabid objections come in such as the utility company tracking what tv shows you watched for example, which would seem a very simple step since you are monitoring it already. Or maybe sending subliminal messages through the tv when you have it on (just thought of that one :ph34r: :D .)Or what your printer was used to print. Maybe even what phone numbers left messages on your answering machine. You can get as paranoid as you like but as they say, just because you are paranoid doesn't mean there isn't any hazard. The sort of information being gathered just because it CAN be gathered, is already way beyond what most people think. Some of the marketting software out there can profile most people almost to the name and colour of their dog and sometimes even that. Most houses are likely shown on Google earth, in the event someone cares to check it out. If you want to find out what's going on at an address, you don't need to watch a house now, set a video camera facing the computer screen. Big Brother is definitely already here, but no need to invite him into the house.

Fair enough. Track the times of usage. Just don't come INTO my house.

Not sure it's quite that simple. Certainly people change behaviour for reasons other than money. The blue boxes for home recycling at least here don't offer any financial incentive yet most people seem to use them. Certainly the community recycling boxes for cardboard and such which definitely don't offer any financial reward are actively supported although it actually costs time and money to drive to them. That said, there are still people who toss beer bottles out into the ditches and such and there is a financial reward for returning the bottles. Enough people toss returnable bottles that some homeless people have routes they travel to collect them for some cash. You could say that the behaviour of the homeless people has changed but not that of the actual consumer. When the financial incentives come into play, often it seems to be when something takes a huge leap upwards, not so much if there is a possibility of a relatively minor saving of what is already spent. If you take tobacco as an example most smokers (the ones I know anyway) were appalled when a pack of cigarettes slid over $5 as they used to be able to buy cartons on sale for less than that. Now a pack of cigarettes here is well over $10 and they are still smoking. For sure some have quit (the ones who wanted to quit anyway, generally) but certainly not all. Gas prices are another thing; people didn't really change driving habits a whole lot until fuel cost almost doubled within a few months. So to be effective, the basic cost of energy would seem to need to take a huge leap upwards to generate much change in consumer behaviour. The shareholders of the utility companies would like that, consumers not so much. I suppose that's the rallying cry of the smart meter proponents, that the utility companies could take over the responsibility and do it for them. I (clearly) don't believe in companies or governments taking over my choices, even if I am making less than optimum ones.

You may have a point here. I had not realized that smart meters had been around for that length of time as I heard about such programs in place a long time ago, I would guess about 10 years or so. In any case, there is a quantum leap between knowing when you use x amount of power and having the smart meters monitoring your individual appliances.

It's hard to imagine anyone at all doesn't already know when the peak loads for power happen. I believe that already in some places even without the smart meters, there is a lower cost for power used at those times. So why is it important for the power company to know precisely what you are doing when? Do you really want the power company to decide when you can do a laundry or wash your dishes? Or have to reset the parameters you set so that you can do them when you want? If you already have timers that you aren't using ,then I don't understand why you should suggest that smart meters are the way to go, as clearly power usage is not of major concern to you. If you ARE using them then it's hard to see what smart meters will do for you that you cannot do for yourself. Here the projected cost of the meters is considerably more than the cost of a couple of timers to run things.

It seems to come down to whether or not 1) they will indeed result in sufficient savings to justify the cost and 2) you trust your power companies and the government to limit the information they collect to that they tell you they are collecting - and if you consider even some of that (at precisely what times you used how much water or power) any of their business. Several places have put the brakes on after climbing enthusiastically aboard, according to Wikipedia. Australia had mandated all meters be replaced with smart meters and now is backing off for another look, at least one European country is doing the same,saying that the benefits to the consumer have not been realized and the costs higher than forecast. (Isn't this generally the case?) Apparently smart meters are not able to work "with" any other power such as solar as the present meters are, so a building partly off grid can't get credit for any power it feeds back into the system when it has excess. Not something that affects many people but still something to consider when they are being promoted as good for consumers. They say they are tamperproof but people are already promoting a number of suggestions as to how they can be subverted. If you have a couple of dozen people designing something and maybe several thousand or more around the world actively looking for ways to mess it up, I'd bet on at least one or two of those trying to mess it up being able to find a way to do it. So then you will have increased costs when the companies have to upgrade to counter and fix things. There is also the not inconsiderable concern about privacy issues once they are installed. The possibilities of gathering information other than what they say they are collecting is something to be considered. Although some people feel that they needn't complain as they have nothing to hide, that is decidedly not the point. There is a reason why such things as needing search warrants and innocent until proven guilty have been put into effect. The present government may be all you could possibly hope it to be but once privacy is totally gone there will be no getting it back when some government in the future may not be so benign. There have been some health issues raised as well. Here, my electrical bill last month was as usual higher for the "privilege" of being connected than it was for the power I used, so I can't see that smart meters would do anything for me but cost me money and privacy.