No problem. Next time, you can get me. :)

True enough, and a valid consideration that must be accounted for in any actual change to building codes.

Keep in mind that I said "by now" not "starting today". Obviously, having done little to this point, we can't just jump to perfection in one step.

It's worth pointing out that Ford claims that their F-150 Lightning can provide up to 3 days of backup power to a household in some configurations. Given what seems to be a trend of building EVs that are capable of providing backup power to households, that should be factored in as we move forward.

And it doesn't have to be 3 days. Overnight in summer would be a good start, followed by overnight in winter, then moving on from there.

The real issue is that I see $350k houses being built in Saskatchewan with nothing. No solar, no heat pump, no passive heating or cooling, and sketchy insulation. The latter 2 were figured out in the 1980s and nothing has been done since at the building code level.

That same money would build a house 1/2 to 1/3 the size, a still adequate size, with solar, heat pumps, good insulation, and decent passive heating and cooling.

Oh for heaven's sake. By now, building codes should prohibit new single-family and low-density (< 12 units) multi-family construction with gas hookups, without solar that matches expected electrical demand, and without 3 days of battery backup.

If that means a 900 square foot house instead of a 2500 square foot house and no more low-density multi-family construction so be it.

Likewise, the building codes should require some of that stuff during certain kinds of renovations and repairs. For example, replacing a gas furnace with another gas furnace should be prohibited.

If the grid and manufacturing capacity won't handle it today, then they better damn well get going, because that's what it's going to take.

Oh yes, the term limits should be reduced. But one thing I like about the appointment system (also easily managed under sortition) is that individual terms are just that, individual. That is, there isn't a wholesale sweep of all sitting members at once, the way there is with Parliament.

I don't know how something like that could be managed in a purely elected body and think it's worth keeping. I suppose there wouldn't really be a problem with having everyone elected via what we now call byelection.

That makes me wonder if party politics, campaigning, and electioneering would change if Parliamentary terms were individualized instead of globalized to the Parliament as a whole.

Yup, no spine and maybe no ethics. Sometimes you have to do what is right, regardless of the consequences to yourself. Every ethical person knows that and every ethical person with a spine sucks it up and makes it happen.

I'm far from being any kind of expert, but yes, that's the way it looks to me.

The pavement and hard packed gravel roads run pretty close to the same, whether it's meltwater or rain, but the dirt roads, ditches, hills and coulees run very differently. My guess is that with meltwater, the ground is still frozen, so can't absorb the water.

Don't forget that impaired driving is a criminal offense. I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that impaired driving makes up over half of those with criminal records. Maybe more in SK, where even senior politicians, including the Premier, have impaired driving records.

Yes, it was very badly constructed. I had to read it a couple of times to decode it, and I have the advantage of having graded essays :)

I'm very impressed by the compassion of your response. It would have been so much easier to downvotes and move on, my first instinct.

That makes me think that there need to be dedicated locations, perhaps with a few critical utilities already in place. The numbers of people living there and their reasons for living there would be a useful measure of how well we're doing in providing proper shelter.

Those locations need to have ready access to various services, not parked on the outskirts. Maybe it's worth giving up a park or two. Keeping them central and visible would be an important part of getting communities on board with proper social housing programs.

I have no doubt that, in certain climates or certain times of year, some people would deliberately choose to live there for adventure or lifestyle reasons, but I don't see anything wrong with that.

Gauges measured stress on the metacarpals during punches and slaps on padded-dumbbell targets created with a pendulum-like device.

I take "a pendulum-like device" to mean they suspended either the arms or the targets and swung them to a collision.

Oh yeah, it has a lot of holes! Despite the effort I put in, I should have called it what it is: back of the envelope analysis. The only reason I did it was to satisfy my curiosity regarding the initial statement, then felt compelled to share it. :)

I doubt they let the logs dry at all, but the only caloric content I could find for logs assumed air-dried to 20%. I don't know enough to consider other methodologies like carbon content, etc.

My 100 km was intended as a rate of energy consumption, not an actual hauling distance, but I didn't make that clear.