gramie

I'm just about to move to Quebec, which is based on the French Napoleonic code rather than English Common Law. I'm not an expert, but I understand that the French system does not rely on precedent in making judicial decisions, but everything has to be codified in the law.

Anyway, another one of the legal differences between Quebec and other provinces in Canada is that mandatory arbitration clauses are illegal.

The medical system may be imploding even faster than the rest of Canada, and my rights as an English speaker may be stripped from me by the time I move, but they do have some protections for individuals.

Thanks for the information! I thought it was more uniform in the americas, and usted was mostly used in Europe. I guess I will just have to listen to the people around me and try to do what they do.

As I understand it, in Latin America, usted is very rarely used regardless of the relationships between people.

I think that you are reading too much into it. The reason they vote against the public good, like universal healthcare, is because they are paid lots of money to do so.

I could actually see the point in learning both, because there is a very good chance that engineers are going to be facing both systems in their professional lives.

I went to university in Canada for engineering in the early 1980s. We had to learn both Imperial and metric, because almost all the textbooks and equipment came from the US. We would usually convert into metric to do all calculations and then convert back at the end because to do otherwise is insanity.

I would guess that the same is still true today, because the equipment and textbooks still come from the US.

In Japan, every day in the calendar has a "luck" associated with it. Weddings and other important events are always scheduled for good luck days, and bad luck days are avoided. Certain years of your life are also better or worse (eg. a woman's 31st year might be unlucky.

At least, that's how it was d when I lived there 25 years ago. I also think this system may have been adopted from China.

But in the United States military, a video showing the killing of a surrendering soldier, regardless of the circumstances, would prompt an immediate investigation

I think he means a video that was unfortunately made public. Otherwise it would be covered up as usual.

A couple of years ago, Canada required all carriers to cell unlocked phones, or allow them to be unlocked for free. Nothing bad has happened because of that. Our cell phone plans are still too expensive, and the companies are wildly profitable.

I bought a book that had Yggdrasil in a CD that I used so I didn't have to go into the university for the Unix labs.

I think that the entirety of the book, around 1,000 pages, was printed out man pages.

This is coming rather late, but I would definitely recommend Language Transfer. It's a series of MP3s, that you can listen to on their own, or use their convenient app. The whole thing is free, although they are happy to accept donations.

I just discovered Fernwood2Night and America2Night, which I haven't seen since they were broadcast in the 70s. It's a mock late night talk show that launched the careers of Martin mull and Fred Willard.