I greatly enjoyed the 1989 Jack Nicholson / Michael Keaton comic-book based superhero action thriller, Batman, when it originally came out to movie theaters. Nicholson’s performance as notorious archnemesis The Joker in that film was outstanding, and it is still worth watching twenty years later. The Joker’s overwhelming insanity and colours are a perfect foil [...]
New climate change regulations have successfully passed through their initial step in the U.S. House of Representatives recently (though its passage through the U.S. Senate is still not guaranteed when it comes up for a vote there in October), after years of growing public interest, understanding, and knowledge about the issue of climate change/global warming. [...]
Finally, the new president of the United States, Barack Obama, has been sworn into office. However, even at this very early stage, it appears that a few things about the day may have already tarnished this fresh administration:
First of all, the prodigal $160-million price tag for the inauguration (just slightly less than the budget of [...]
Well, as most people living in Canada are aware, the economic downturn has taken a backseat in the news to the constitutional crisis. Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative minority government put out a fiscal update on the country on November 27th which did not include plans for an economic package with sufficient bailouts, kickbacks, and [...]
Thankfully, the election in the United States will at last be done and over with by tomorrow’s end, and they will finally have decided upon their next leader (assuming no Electoral College debacles as I discussed previously). Currently, Democratic nominee Barack Obama appears to be the main contender for the presidency, based on the latest national poll [...]
The U.S. has its own unique method of deciding the winner of general elections, using the Electoral College system to determine who becomes the next President. Each state in the U.S. has a specified number of “electoral votes”, a figure (this year) between 3 and 55, generally based on the state’s population. After people have voted in the [...]
I watched the Canadian party leader’s debate last week. This regular election campaign event always helps to shed light, not only on an extended discussion of the proposed policies of the various parties, but also on characterizing the dynamic between the five personalities involved. It was important for them to share their actual party platforms at the debate, but [...]
Given all of the excitement surrounding the upcoming U.S. election, a question that came to me recently was, what did presidential (and vice-presidential) candidates do for work before they got elected? Depending upon their political party, was there a pattern in the types of day-jobs they held before they became involved in politics?
I decided to consider those [...]
A general election was recently called in Canada, with the voters of this nation being called to the polls to vote on October 14, 2008. As usual, the next parliament will be made up of the four main political parties, with the usual change in their overall balance creating a minority or majority government lead [...]
There has been some great excitement recently in U.S. presidential election politics, with Barack Obama officially accepting the Democratic Party’s nomination at their National Convention in Denver. This news was so far-reaching, that even the ‘Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen’ reported on it at their website. I never really associated the profession of engineering [...]