From Reuters:A Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station said on Sunday it looks like Earth's ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago.
Bob Thirsk, who is two months into a planned six-month stay aboard the station, said he is mostly in awe when he looks out the window, particularly at the sliver of atmosphere wrapped around the planet.
"It's a very thin veil of atmosphere around the Earth that keeps us alive," Thirsk said during an in-flight news conference. "Most of the time when I look out the window I'm in awe. But there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well."
"This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the mountains is less than it was 12 years ago when I saw it last time," Thrisk said. "That saddens me a little bit."
Thirsk can see a change in just 12 years from space. But then, he's Canadian! Aren't they those godless, gunless socialists with all that nasty universal health care and stuff?
5 comments:
Canadians just love snow and ice, that's why he's sad.
Canadian Border Services Association has a mandate to arm their officers with sidearms. Don't believe any hype that they are gun free nation.
They seem to have as many churches per capita as the US does.
I hope the US gets a better health plan than we Canadians have. We pay dearly for it, it is abused, it can't pay a decent wage to the health care workers, so they are always looking to the greener pastures south. To secure an appointment for anything other than minor surgery takes a long long time. The Canadian Health Care System is not a good model for Nationalized Health Care.
Of course a nation's law enforcement personnel are armed. My comment refers to the average Canadian citizen, who isn't running around shooting people at colleges, doctor's offices, in their homes or out in the streets like in gun-crazy America.
You'd get a helluva argument from the Canadians that I know regarding Canadian health care. They love theirs...
And Canadians voted Tommy Douglas--the father of Canadian health care--the Greatest Canadian in history. I don't think that was because they thought the system sucked.
You must have forgotten the killing spree at McGill University in their engineering department, I believe it was 20 killed by one man with an automatic weapon. Certainly not an average citizen anymore than the crazies in the States who carry out the same are.
It all depends on where in Canada you are. Big city, rich Province, chances are the service is better. How about smaller cities or outlying areas in poor provinces. How about having a hospital in your home town reduced to a clinic or shut down completely and then being told that you will need to travel over an hour to get to the nearest health center. Be careful in accepting a few opinions as the way it is.
...just as I am careful of cherry-picked, isolated incidents that are aberrations to the accepted norm.
Oh, Canada: if you don't think small town America has problems with lack of medical facilities, clinics, etc., maybe you've never been to small town America.
There is no such thing as a "perfect" system, but Canada's beats ours, hands-down.
As far as guns, in 2005 Canada had 222 homicides with firearms. The US? 10,100.
The US has 9 times the population Canada and 45 times it's homicide with firearm rate.
Of those, Canada had 146 via handgun; the U.S.? 7,543.
In case you didn't notice, the "godless and gunless" crack is a play on the right-wing's standard clichés surrounding their obsession with "socialism."
They're pretty obsessed with Canada, too, but since many of them probably think it's in Europe, that's not surprising.
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