What Americans Know About Canada

Last night, I couldn’t help miss­ing all of the swipes that the Republican’s took at Canada’s Health Care sys­tem dur­ing their tele­vised debate. I remem­ber either John McCain or Rudolph Giu­liani mak­ing a stu­pid joke that if the US decided to adopt Social­ized Med­i­cine, Cana­di­ans wouldn’t have any­where to go for health care. Yeah, right; Believe what you want to believe, Mr. McCain and Giu­liani. It was amaz­ing how many times that all of the Repub­li­can can­di­dates all repeated the phrase: ‘The US Health Care Sys­tem is the best in the world.”, as if say­ing so would make it true.

When I men­tioned to my par­ents, back in Bal­ti­more, the dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity of a Pres­i­dent Huck­abee, my mother said “If that hap­pens, then we’ll be join­ing you.” Really? If I were them, I’d be more seri­ous about that, con­sid­er­ing this clas­sic clip from the CBC’s This Hour has 22 Min­utes in 2001, where Rick Mer­cer shows just how gullible they (includ­ing Gov­er­nor Huck­abee) can be in Arkansas:

I’ve writ­ten before about the stag­ger­ing lack of knowl­edge about the rest of the world on the part of Amer­i­cans, but I would hope that any poten­tial future Pres­i­dent would know more about Canada than this. Per­haps I should be wor­ried if there will there be enough room for the Amer­i­cans flee­ing north to join us if Mike Huck­abee, a man who might be just as unin­formed as George W. WPIUSH, becomes President.

A follow-up on this, thanks to West End Bound: An Arti­cle in today’s Van­cou­ver Sun:
Cana­dian health care bet­ter and cheaper than U.S., says research If you think that this source might be not entirely neu­tral, bear in mind that they are report­ing on a British study, not a Cana­dian one.

Back from Baltimore, and a Dubious Honour

Wel­come to 2008!

We’re back from an extended Hol­i­day Sea­son visit to my brother and his fam­ily, my par­ents, and some social calls on both sides of the con­ti­nent. High­lights included see­ing my niece dance in the Seat­tle Ballet’s Nut­cracker for the sec­ond year, and a Roast Goose New Year’s Day din­ner with my par­ents in Bal­ti­more (includ­ing Spaet­zle, Green Beans, and Red Cab­bage — the theme was clearly Ger­man Cui­sine). I’d not had roast goose before, and it is a treat, par­tic­u­larly if you like ‘dark’ meat. Even the breast meat on this bird is dark!

Pam was able to swing north to Mass­a­chu­setts for a few days to visit with her brother and his fam­ily, while I helped my Dad upgrade to Leop­ard. A good thing, too, as his upgrade was just as dif­fi­cult as mine (once again tak­ing 3 attempts, and end­ing up with a call that went to 2 Apple Tech Sup­port Reps and ulti­mately required a clean install, as well as us man­u­ally installing all appli­ca­tions and mov­ing all of his email accounts, doc­u­ments, cal­en­dars and address book entries — just as I had to).

The trip to the States was not with­out some cul­ture shock (it always hits me, despite my best efforts to pre­pare for the dif­fer­ences). On our flights there, my seat com­pan­ions were con­stantly read­ing Bibles. On the way back (with a stop in Cincin­nati, where I was able to get some Cincin­nati Chili at the food court, a del­i­cacy of my under­grad years), we were amazed at the throngs of sol­diers every­where, with make-shift lounges set up in all of the air­ports we were in. Reli­gion and the Mil­i­tary: not a great com­bi­na­tion for me.

I’m still recov­er­ing from a nasty cold that I caught while away (which unfor­tu­nately, my father also caught and in his case it has since turned into Flu). Work starts up, but for me it’s just a week as the fol­low­ing week I’ll be in San Fran­cisco for Mac­World Expo.

Speak­ing of things in Tech, my brother alerted me to a some­what puz­zling hon­our for our family:

Drucker : next gen Win­dows Mobile smart­phone from Palm
Jan­u­ary 6, 2008 – 11:22 am

Now that all of Palm’s flag­ship Treo 750 smart­phones have been upgraded to Win­dows Mobile 6, it’s now time to look for­ward to 6.1. Engad­get reports that the next high end Win­dows Mobile phone from Palm is code-named “Drucker”. Here’s what we know so far about Drucker:

• GSM/EDGE/HSDPA
• runs Win­dows Mobile 6.1
• 2 Megapixel camera
• 1500mAh bat­tery
• 320×320 screen
• Blue­tooth

Drucker, which will be a replace­ment for the Treo 750v, will be the first smart­phone from Palm that sup­ports WiFi. It’s also the first to match cur­rent Palm OS-based smart­phones in terms of screen res­o­lu­tion. Drucker is expected to have a retail price of £270 (about US$534), and will prob­a­bly be avail­able first for Vodafone.

I have noth­ing to do with this phone, and frankly, I’d prob­a­bly never buy a phone using Win­dows Mobile. I wish they had at least code-named the Palm OS phone with our last name, but then again, these days, if it’s not an iPhone, I’m not all that inter­ested. I’m less and less sat­is­fied with my frequently-crashing Treo, and I doubt if a new one is in my future. I’ve been a Palm user for per­haps 12–15 years but it’s clearly time to move on if the best they can do is to use Win­dows and code-name the device after our clan. (Heh).