Naga

Deficits implies spending, as a deficit occurs when spending is greater than receipts.

The hard part is that nominally Apple is the most valuable, because it has the highest market value, but of course that doesn't take into consideration inflation. I think the general consensus is that the Dutch East India Company (VOC) was the most valuable. Excuse the below clickbait article, but it was the first result when I searched: https://dutchreview.com/culture/history/how-rich-was-the-dut...

That isn't a Japanese steel concern though, that's a steel manufacturing concern. U.S. Steel could do the same thing.

This doesn't transfer to Canada. Calling the CRA is a chore. The agents are ill trained and often give incorrect information.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/cra-blocks-cal...

> Augustus chose Christianity as the state religion of Rome because it was a great tool to unify the different cultures under emperorial rule

As a fellow history major, the worst thing in the world is when you make a simple error and everyone calls you on it saying "I thought you were a history major". ;)

If you remember, the United States declared war on Britain, not the other way around. Britain also arguably won the war since the result was status quo ante bellum, which is all that Britain wanted since they were at war with France at the same time for over a decade.

Not sure about where you are from, but in Canada distances are routinely given in hours or minutes, and it always means by car unless it is specified. As in, "Toronto to Ottawa is around five hours, or an hour by plane."

It truly is a shame. I was seriously considering pursuing a PhD in history and one of my professors warned me against it. I ended up geting a degree in accounting and have not regretted anything.

I'd say that the difference between lots of stairs and and no stairs is enough to cause a difference in price for rent. I'd say that this is the market working as intended. Or, if you believe that it is not a big deal, you can abuse the market inefficiency ;)

I'm not as familiar with the VOC as maybe I should be, but the British East India Company actually was the government of India from 1757 to 1858, when the British state took over. Until 1858, the territory of the EIC was administered by a Board of Directors who were responsible to shareholders, not to Parliament.

I majored in History in university. I graduated, was discouraged from grad school by my professors (one of my professors stressed that when he was doing his PhD probably ten years before our conversation, he was so poor he had to literally fish to feed himself), and went back to school for accounting. As someone who went through it and can honestly evaluate the return on investment for my history degree, I don't believe it has paid back yet five years out. I did not learn practical skills, which are important for getting a career after exiting school. That's why my accounting degree was necessary. I will say though that I believe I learned a lot of important soft skills in the humanities, which I believe make me 1) a better person in general and 2) a more attractive candidate for jobs, since the skills I have (critical thinking, writing, etc) are not learned in business. They try to teach it in some courses, but it takes the leisure of taking a full humanities degree to properly learn it. It put this into perspective, writing an essay is taking a firehose of data, analyzing it and presenting a critical opinion on it. Most people who I was in business school with struggled because there is no right answer, and there is no answer key. A well reasoned argument based on the data given makes a good essay and good grades.

I will also say that in the professional accounting designation program, they are emphasizing that these are necessary skills for accountants to have now. I watch people studying for exams worrying about the same things. The exams are graded based on giving a 'competent' (their buzzword) answer based on the information given, which many people struggle with. I, on the other hand, find it very easy and do not have to study nearly as hard as my peers to succeed on the exams.

I don't mean to toot my own horn, and I do not think I am better than everyone else. I think that my time spent in the humanities has really benefited me in my career, but only after learning practical, 'hard' skills. Would I do it this way again, if I had the chance to start over? Probably not. Would I recommend someone going back to school for a humanities degree, after taking business/STEM? Maybe not, but there is definitely value in them.

I switched to DDG permanently because of their other bangs. I am a baseball fan and regularly use FanGraphs to look at stats. If I google a baseball player, FanGraphs isn't even on the front page. Instead, I have news articles about him, tweets from him, and a bunch of other sites. With DDG, I can simply go "!fg jose bautista" and get exactly what I want. It really has saved me a lot of time and effort. Same thing with !w for wikipedia.

It's a Quebec thing. I moved to Quebec a few years ago and had to buy a whole set of appliances, as every other place I lived in always came with them. Looking at other places around me as well, none of them come with appliances.

I believe he was saying that it used to be much worse, not that it is like that now.

As a frequent RSS user, I don't mind when feeds use links back to the main site. I personally use RSS to notify me when a new article is posted.

I want to emphasize the YouTube video at the bottom of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCFo0a8V-Ag

As soon as I saw the headline, I knew I couldn't let a reference to my favourite band go unmentioned. It is almost criminal how underappreciated the Tragically Hip are as a band.

There's other rumours (is that the right word?) that English fishermen were very familiar with the Grand Banks as well, and could have used North America as a staging group

I thought this older article on airplane autopilot and its effects on pilots was relevant to be bringing up again, given the current discussions on self-driving cars.

I have no problem with that. Selling used books as an individual is hard, since people will not pay a lot of money for them (since brand new books are cheap), so at least for me I find its not worth the time to sell them. At least then the public library benefits from the donation.

I missed that article two weeks ago, thanks for linking the discussion.

There's a dimension left out here on the Phoenix disaster: It wasn't really IBM's fault at all.

The Canadian public service is really complex. There are multiple unions with multiple overlapping collective bargaining agreements, where the public service is allocated to different classes. These classes are paid specific rates, with retroactive pay being common for changing classes. The majority of the problems with Phoenix have been employees moving from their classes and being paid the correct amount. It has also adversely affected non-unionized positions.

My understanding is that the Harper government (Prime Minister until 2015), who was responsible for the negotiation and for laying out the requirements, was trying to save a money and not responibly create a pay system. Two major factors that jump out at me:

1) Requirements did not call for training. The system was implemented and IBM was not required to train any operators on how the system functions, which is important because all new staff were hired to run the system and,

2) Due to the need for cost saving measures (the government was trying really hard to balance the budget, as the election was coming up), the previous payroll staff were terminated and a new payroll centre was opened in Miramichi, which is a small town in the middle of nowhere.

So, on top of new software, the government lost all of its institutional knowledge regarding payroll and how things are supposed to work. It's actually hard to say how much of this is IBM's fault and how much is the governments, because the government doesn't know how to fix it. No one knows how Phoenix works and no one knows how it is supposed to work. It's just a big mess with no end in sight.

Could IBM have done a better job? Probably, but garbage in, garbage out.

For further reading, the Auditor-General's report: http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_oag_201711_01...

There's some research that has been done into the Little Ice Age being caused by the reforestation of the Americas after disease wiped out the populations: https://phys.org/news/2011-10-team-european-ice-age-due.html.

I used to be a Walrus subscriber, but that's basically their whole shtick - well-written half articles.

There is a good book on this subject that just came out: The Chickenshit Club by Jesse Eisinger (https://www.amazon.ca/Chickenshit-Club-Department-Prosecute-...). It's about the culture inside the SEC and Justice Department and their motivations over the last thirty or so years.

Too bad emacs just don't have a good text editor ;)

The American Revolution isn't nearly as clear cut as that. It wasn't anti-taxation, it was anti-taxation without representation. The colonists were objecting to being taxed without having a say in the levying of the taxes. There were many colonial Americans who would have been happy returning Members to Parliament without independence.

The core of the issue really was that Britain defended the American colonies from French invasion during the Seven Year's War and the British taxpayer bore the brunt of the taxation (I can't remember exact figures, but Britons were taxed much, much heavier than Americans, even after the stamp duties and tea taxes). After the war, Parliament came looking for payback, understandably. So Britain wasn't using taxation to control the colonies, it was looking to recoup the costs of defending them.

On a sidenote, this is actually quite interesting in today's context over NATO military spending, where now it is Britain freeloading on American military spending.

For accountant offices, the Big 4 are starting to roll out hotdesking, unfortunately.

As per their most recent (unaudited) financial statements released May 9, 2017, they had almost $22 billion in assets. The large majority of them ($13 billion) are investments, $2.4 billion in cash and a paltry $400,000 in property plant and equipment. So from this perspective, they are really an investment company that happens to let you compare prices for things.

However, financial statements don't consider data as something of value, or brand names (unless they are purchased), so the company might be "worth" much more than this.

http://ir.pricelinegroup.com/financials.cfm

CanCon, as the process is known, has many problems. It has forced radio stations to constantly play the Tragically Hip as well, who I would argue deserve to be played.

I recently finished reading Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, a history of the CIA. He basically argues that the entire organization has been marked by incompetence and politics throughout history. It was really eye-opening to me to hear that the mysterious organization behind all conspiracy theories is mostly smoke and mirrors. Cue the old adage regarding malice and stupidity.