Rich

When the Jets came back, the naming rights deal with the arena was extended to 2021 with the option to extend to 2030. I'm sure there would also be provisions in the contract on what would happen / how it would be handled if MTS were ever sold.

Wheeler also has a NTC. What is interesting with Buff's contract is the first 2 years (next year and the year after) are NMC, then it switches to a modified NTC. So it depends on what year they ultimately expand in.

Ryan Kessler $6.9M per for the next 6 years taking him to the ripe old age of 37. Corry Perry $8.6M per year for the next 5 years taking him to 35 Ryan Getlzaf - $8.25M per year for the next 5 years talking him to 35 Those 3 contracts are going to be boat anchors and hard to move if they decide to pull the plug and start a rebuild.

http://www.bluebombers.com/2016/04/29/bombers-acquire-hall-of-fame-football-writer-ed-tait/ Will be nice to see the quality of content on the Bomber site go up. However, Ed will now be an employee of the club, so his editorials will likely be more biased. Also going to miss his coverage of the Jets with the Free Press. Big loss for the paper. Hope Ed is happy with his new job, he has been one of the better reporters in this city for the last 20 - 30 years.

What makes him worse? How many of us have seen any of these guys play on a regular basis to make an informed opinion either way? I know I haven't, so I don't really have a strong opinion either way. Have you?

The teacher discussion has been moved to a new topic. Your guys history of this topic went too far back in this thread for me to find the beginning of it to move it. Please continue it there.

Split this off into its own topic. KBF / Mark, I couldn't split out your whole discussion on the BC teachers deal in here because I lost interest after going back 6 pages and still didn't find its start. Feel free to continue that discussion here though.

I think the measuring of teacher’s performance to weed out the bad ones is a very tricky thing which could have very bad consequences. Good in theory, very hard in practice. How do you measure that performance? If you get that wrong, does a teacher change their teaching to conform to what is in the best interest of them keeping their job vs. what is in the best interest of their students? Look at the horror stories you read in the states when they implemented their no child left behind program, where school funding was based on student performance. The result was definitely not in the best interest of the student. The unfortunate truth is that ½ of the people out there are in the bottom half of society in terms of ability and performance. You are going to get good teachers and bad. You absolutely need to be able to get rid of the abusive ones, but the so called “bad” ones do serve a purpose as well. Imagine you went through your whole education with only the “good” teachers. Everything is butterflies and rainbows. People are nice, encouraging, you are free to grow and develop. Now you get out into the real world and your first boss is a grade a ******. You are not at all equipped to handle that, because you have very little experiences to relate to this situation. I hope we all have fond memories of some teachers that have touched us and influenced us growing up, but the “bad” ones, the “boring” ones, and the “strict” ones probably taught you some valuable life lessons as well, whether they meant to or not.

I've said my peace. I'm fine if we get back to discussing politics.

I don't know what the dire situation in America is, but these two bolded statements come across as quite different. Your original post, to which to anyone reading it, sure seemed to imply that they had it really easy, since they scoffed that it was a hard job and you went on to list all of the great perks about it. But then we gloss over that and want to talk about the bad teachers and how to get rid of them.

I’ve spent a few years as an instructor at Red River and teaching isn’t at all like an office job, and if you’ve never done it day in and day out, it is hard to explain. The stress and pressures are much much different, but they are there. In fact, as an instructor at Red River, I think I had it easier then teachers. It is way different teaching adults who are paying for the right to be there versus children who you have a much greater responsibility to help grow and develop. Even at Red River, I got 2 months off at summer, a week at Christmas, a week between terms, etc. Yes, it was very nice to have that time off, but the job and the pressure in it is way different then anything else I’ve done (regular job and what I do now is in an office environment). You get to basically make the timelines, so you don't get that kind of pressure, but the pressure comes from knowing that everyday, regardless of how you feel, you need to be up, prepared, and ready to present and teach. At work if you are tired or having a bad day, you can at times go on cruise control just to get through the day. When you are teaching you have to be “on” all the time. Imagine every day you need to prepare to be up in front of people, educating them, presenting, and helping them learn. Yes, it gets easier when you teach the same material over many terms. You get to tweak it rather than having to learn it outright, but knowing something enough to be able to teach it is having to learn it to a much higher level of understanding then just comprehending it. And an hour in a classroom presenting is way more mentally exhausting then a morning spent at my desk. I don’t begrudge teachers their pay or holidays. They have an incredibly important job in our society. We basically “off load” our children to these people for them to educate rather than doing it ourselves. You want there to be enough pay and perks to the job to be able to attract competent people. In reality, kids aren’t going to go to school for 12 months of the year. Down time and summer recreation is also important for their development. What do you want teachers to do for this time? And there is a need to have time to decompress from a job where you have to be up, live, and “on” in front of a group of people or kids every day for hours on end. Or you will see a much higher rate of burnout.

This is an interesting discussion. I know someone whose work place is going through this very issue. A new staff member is transitioning from female to male and there is much consternation over which washroom he should use. I find it very hard to buy in to the children debate, and is actually quite insulting to an entire demographic of people. It is like saying no men should be around children because some men abuse them. Some adult men abuse male boys as well and no one is up in arms about creating segregated washrooms for adults and children. In fact, statistically speaking, children are much more at risk of being abused by someone they know and not a stranger in a chance meeting in a washroom. Personally, I go to the washroom for a very specific reason, and I could care less who is in the stall next to me. Make unisex washrooms for everyone, what does it really matter. In regards to a plebiscite on this, although I don’t believe it should ever be binding, but I’d be willing to bet that a high percentage of people under 40 couldn’t care less one way or the other. The problem with having a plebiscite, is only people who feel strongly about it will really vote, which means you will get much more support for people against it as the ones who truly have a stake in the “for” are relatively small in number. Those who have no problem with it but don’t feel strongly about it (like me), wouldn’t vote. People are entitled to be uncomfortable with this, you can’t really change how you feel, but people also need to try to be tolerant as well. I can assure you that any discomfort that someone feels with having a transgendered person in their washroom is a drop in the bucket compared to the discomfort, discrimination, and bullying these people live on a daily basis. And no, this is not something they “chose” to be or become, it is who they are, and they are forced to choose to live through that discrimination every day or hide who they really are. This is the choice people in this situation have with laws against transgendered people using a washroom that is not the same as their birth gender: They can dress and look in a way that is most comfortable to them and use a washroom appropriate to how they look but break the law. They can dress and look in a way that is most comfortable to them and use a washroom based on their birth gender, and get strange looks and calls from security when someone reports them using the incorrect washroom. They can hide who they really are and dress and look like their birth gender and use that washroom None of those are good choices. People who are brave enough to force this issue are taking the steps and paying the price now to bring education and understanding to the issue so that at some point down the road, this isn't something even worth having a discussion over.

One of the biggest cost to Tesla right now is maintenance of these cars. There are not enough garages to service them. If you are outside the range of a Tesla service centre, they will drive a replacement car to you, take yours away on a truck, then return it once it is fixed. For general maintenance, they have mobile trucks that can do basic maintenance and repairs. A lot of the cost of the vehicles today is to factor in those costs. As Tesla grows, and their presence grows, that cost becomes less. There are recycling programs in place today to deal with their batteries. Other issues with Tesla cars are they need to be really light weight, so the metals they use can be more expensive then a regular car. The charging of batteries can shift / mask environment concerns as well. For many areas in the states, you are shifting powering cars by gasoline to coal (since coal generated electricity would recharge the cars battery). Still not great for the environment. I've read some studies that say the overall impact if you include manufacturing of the battery of these cars to normal cars aren't much better if they are being powered by coal. (coal being more efficient for the environment then gas, but the manufacturing process adds to that). But for wind and hydro electricity, there is a net benefit. I have no problem with the government subsidizing these types of things in the beginning , but there has to come a time when they've advanced the technology enough they can be self sufficient.

According to the liberals Others say there is a $4 billion surplus Debt and deficit are not the same thing. Harper ran 6 deficits contributing $150B to the debt. Now the impact of that debt compared to GDP growth may be something else. But for a fiscal conservative, he ran a lot of deficits.

I think there is a good chance we lose Poolmam now. He will finish College then only have to wait a few months to become free agent. He will still have to sign an ELC, but he will be able to go to whatever city is better for him either geographically or opportunity. Now, he went to school @ UND and born in Grand Forks, so it isn't entirely out of the question that he would choose here. But if the Wild were to offer him a contract as well... He was a 5th round draft pick and was drafted when he was 20. He has good size, not sure he would be more then a 3rd pairing in the NHL if he were ever to make it.

Because of the vast differences of the game, this part makes me feel better. This part, not so much... Great opportunity for the refs, but we can't really afford to lose our best refs. Although I find it unlikely they end up hiring any of our refs.

Here are the apparent quotes from her. http://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/452458/Sharon-Stone-was-angered-after-seeing-famous-Basic-Instinct-scene-for-the-first-time Is she being honest here or mis-remembering ... who knows.

Apparently Stone didn't know the extent of what was shown in that scene until she saw it in the theatre. The director convinced her to go commando duel to lines showing through her white dress and she didn't realized what the camera angle would pick up.

Welcome!

There is no doubt there are some issues there with what she did. And I would surmise she was heavily influenced by Bernardo, but that still doesn't make the comparison to Vince Li at all valid. Vince Li was found NCR (Not Criminally Responsible). Homolka was not. The reason is that in Vince's mind, he literally thought he was killing a monster or whatever vision he saw. Had he known it was a person, he wouldn't have done it. Homolka was criminally responsible, and regardless of what influence and issues she had to deal with, on some level she knew what she was doing was to another human being. What Vince Li did was horrible, there is no doubt, and he needs to be under supervision to make sure it doesn't happen again, but the mental issues he suffers from is not at all the same as people who suffer from abuse / neglect / or whatever caused Homolka to do what she did. Imagine the first job that you worked at. Imagine all the people you met. The ones you hated. The ones you liked. Imagine your boss, your friends, conversations you had with them, things you did with them at work and after work. Imagine that whole world. Now imagine someone tells you today that all of that is a fabrication of your mind. What you thought with 100% certainty was reality, isn't. That is really what it is like for someone with Schizophrenia. Somewhere in her mind, Homolka knew what she was doing. Vince Li did not.

Vince Li is not at all the same situation as Carla Homolka, and although he has killed someone he actually isn't capable of knowingly doing it. He didn't know he was killing a person, in his mind it was some other thing he was killing, and he has to live with what happened in reality the rest of his life on top of the mental health issues he has. Because of that one event, Vince Li, wherever he is living, will forever be monitored to be sure he is taking his meds. What Hamolka did, she did with the full cognisant knowledge of it, and with her parole, she won't be monitored anywhere near as close as Vince Li, if at all. So while I can understand your apprehension of living close to Vince Lee, the risk of him re-offending is lower then some other random crime or accident taking your life, yet I don't see you talking about barricading yourself indoors in bubble wrap to avoid traffic accidents and deadly viruses. I get you are only comparing living in the same neighbourhood as these people, but making the comparison of Homolka to Vince Li does a big disservice to people who suffer from mental health issues.

Click on Super Duper Negatron in the top right. Then choose Account Settings The click Display Name in the left hand panel Type Super Duper Optimist That Will Be Let Down in the New Display Name text Field Click Save

Not a big surprise, but it looks like the Conservatives are in.

Poll projections as of yesterday had St Norbert as 96% PC