Canuck

  Thursday, 4 December 2003

Colder, less snowy < 12:54:32 AM>.

Environment Canada says the coming season will be colder but less snowy than your average winter. [montreal city weblog]

Bummer. The snow I don't mind. The cold . . . ?

< 12:53:14 AM>.

Michael Adams, author of Fire & Ice: The US, Canada and the Myth of Converging Values, is a pollster for Environics Research. Not surprisingly, the data that he uses to support his thesis is based on comprehensive and rigorous polling of Canadians and Americans about what is important to them, and how that is changing over time. His thesis, which got some headlines in the NYT yesterday, is the same one I laid out in my article Why Canadians Fear America: that, far from being Americans 'lite', Canadians have fundamentally different values and worldviews from Americans, and those differences are increasing. Canadians are now much closer to their European contemporaries than to Americans, closer to Europeans, in fact, than are the British. America is now largely isolated in its prevailing worldview from the rest of the developed world. Its values are closer to those of autocractic developing nations than to those of other nations that have made the transition to democracy and constitutional liberalism.[snip] [How to Save the World]

< 12:16:30 AM>.

The Plain English Campaign, an British organization that strives to have public information delivered in straightforward English, has given this year's "Foot in Mouth" award to none other than U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. [Kuro5hin.org]

Hey, our own Chrétien gets a nod. A proof is a proof.