How did all those female Saudi drivers get a license?

As of a few days ago, Saudi Arabian women are finally legally allowed to drive cars, and the news is full of reports of joyful/excited/apprehensive women driving around the streets of Riyadh and Jeddah. Whoop, whoop! Many women are even signing up to become drivers for ride-hailing operations like the Uber knock-off Careem.

My question was: how do these women suddenly have valid drivers' licenses (and for that matter, cars)?

The cars question is perhaps the most easily answered. Most of these women are pretty well off, and are probably members of families that boast several cars to choose from. Or, if need be, they could probably just go out and buy one for cash.

But the licenses? Well, it turns out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is way ahead of us, and made arrangements for licenses to be obtained in advance for those women who already have overseas licenses. Many of them were educated in North America or Europe, for example, and may have obtained drivers' licenses there during their education years. The first ten licenses for Saudi women were issued on June 4th, in preparation for the June 24th lifting of the ban, and many thousands more have followed suit since then. This is literally a case of swapping an overseas license for a Saudi one, with no road test necessary. Several foreign driving schools (e.g. Ford's Driving Skills for Life for Her) are now setting up in the lucrative business of female driving lessons in Saudi Arabia.

It's certainly a big step in the right direction for Saudi Arabia, although there is much more still to be done for equality in the country (and some women driving activists are still in jail for their actions and protests, despite the lifting of the ban). Certainly, having women drivers is not likely to make the country less safe: Saudi has an execrable record of automobile safety, and Arab News reports that some 78,487 people died in car accidents in the ten years to 2016.

Why is Canada putting taxes on these imports, and how does it work?

With all the talk about changes to American tariffs on steel, aluminum, etc, and retaliatory Canadian tariffs on pickles and mustard (not to mention steel and aluminum!), you might, like me, be a bit confused about how these tariffs actually work, and why Canada is targeting obscure items like licorice, toilet paper and beer kegs. Well, a handy tariff primer from CBC might help a bit.

The first thing to appreciate is that there are import tariffs and export tariffs. In most cases, we are talking here about import tariffs. When a targeted product arrives at the importing country's border, there is a whole load of paperwork to complete before it can continue its journey, and part of that paperwork will now involve an import duty of 10%, 15%, whatever it might be. When the exporting company pays the tariff, the money goes straight into the federal treasury of the importing country, like any other tax, and can be used for general government expenditure. In the case of steel products, cars, etc, where a product might cross the border several times during its production, the duty is technically assessed each time it crosses, although it is possible to apply for a rebate (a "drawback" or "remission") in these cases.

But, as well as "punishing" the exporting country and making life more difficult for exporting companies (with the additional theoretical benefit that the slack will be taken up by the importing country's internal market, with less need of actual imports), import tariffs usually result in higher prices in the local market, as overall production operates less efficiently and as prices are marked up as a result of the tariffs if the distributing companies can not (or will not) swallow the extra cost.

So, anyway, against its better judgement, Canada has decided that it has no alternative but to levy tariffs on various goods imported from the USA in a dollar-for-dollar retaliation (to the tune of some $16.6 billion) for the tariffs the Trump administration levied a month ago on Canadian steel and aluminum, and in an attempt to prevent Trump's further threats of a 25% tariff on cars and other vehicles. Thus, we Canadians find ourselves embroiled in a full-scale trade war, through no fault of our own.

As for why Canada has chosen such disparate and apparently random products to tax, they are actually far from random. The products on which new tariffs are being imposed have been carefully chosen to wreak maximum inconvenience to industries in regions of the USA that are strategically and politically important to Donald Trump and to key Republicans. That's how we ended up with a retaliatory list that includes things like pizza, quiche, strawberry jam, ketchup, mustard, pickles, maple syrup, mineral water, orange juice, chocolate, licorice, bourbon, hair lacquer, toilet paper, paper towels, handkerchiefs, mattresses, lawn mowers, sailboats, etc, as well as just steel and aluminum. So, you can probably expect American-sourced versions of many of these things to go up in price here in Canada.

11-year old Nigerian makes hyper-realistic pencil-and-paper pictures

Here's a ridiculously talented 11-year old Nigerian artist, who makes hyper-realistic pictures using just a pencil and paper - and his cellphone for source material.

Khill cleared of murder because he used to be an army reservist

In a virtual re-run of the Stanley-Boushie trial earlier this year, Hamilton man Peter Khill was found not guilty of murdering Jonathan Styres yesterday.
One major difference in this trial was that Khill made no bones about actually shooting Styres, who was trying to steal his pickup truck at the time. But Khill claimed that he was acting in self-defense, even though it is not clear to me why he felt himself mortally threatened, and the jury seems to have believed him. So, instead of calling 911, like most people probably would in the circumstances, he just shot the guy. Twice.
Crucially, the trial hung on the fact that Khill was an ex-army reservist, and that his army training automatically kicked in. So, the fact that the army turns out potential psychopaths and dumps them on the street is somehow a defense for an otherwise unjustified killing?
About the best that can said about this case is that it does not seem to have been racially motivated (unlike the Stanley-Boushie case). But it's still a pretty dark day for Canadian justice.

We don't need "babe cam" coverage of the World Cup

In today's Globe and Mail, John Doyle points out something that I too have noticed during the TV coverage of the 2018 Russia World Cup: those long, lingering shots of female fans, usually blonde, generally painted up with nationalistic symbology, and often skimpily-dressed.
TV cameras often pan around the stadium at major sports events, taking in the atmosphere and showing the depths of emotion to which some fans take their support. It's kind of interesting, sometime funny, and often heart-warming. But it's been many years since this kind of "babe cam" display has been foisted upon us, and it is generally considered sexist and frowned upon. As one commentator says, "They're reducing women fans to the bubbly cute cheerleader in the stands. To boil fans down to boobs and cute outfits is beyond me."
Maybe it's the fact that the World Cup this year is in Russia, which still harbours many antediluvial (and certainly ante-#MeToo and -#TimesUp) attitudes to women and their place in society, I don't know. But, frankly, we can do without this.

False Canada-US tariff chart just more Trumpian fake news

A fake chart is doing the rounds of Facebook, Twitter and many alt-right pro-Trump websites, which suggests that Canada is charging the USA large and unfair tariffs on various imported items.
The chart (here is a version on Twitter with the true figures superimposed) shows, which purports to be based on figures from the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the US International Trade Commission, and the Canadian Minster of International Trade, first appeared after the recent Group of Seven summit in Quebec, when Donald Trump started make all sorts of allegations against Justin Trudeau. It shows a whole host of random false Canadian tariffs - such as 48% on copper; 45% on aluminum, HVAC equipment and televisions: 35% on vacuums and cable boxes; and 25% on cars and steel - none of which actually exist in reality. It also shows falsely low US tariffs on its own exports.
Like so much false news, it is not clear who is actually responsible for the chart, although it is wrong in so many ways (including sloppy spelling mistakes) that it is clearly cooked up by an amateur to back up Donald Trump's narrative on Canadian-US trade, and provide ammunition for Trump supporters in the run-up to the mid-terms elections later this year.
The Globe and Mail pointed out the errors to a few websites who are complicit in distributing these trade fibs, but none of them has actually changed their site. No doubt, the fake news will do its job, and then fade into obscurity, leaving the truth (and the American and Canadian people, not to mention international trade in general) the real victims.

We've been charging cellphone batteries wrongly all these years

It turns out that we've been changing our cellphones wrongly all these years.
Most people - me included - have always assuned that it is bad for cellphone batteries to charge them in little bursts here and there, and that it is best to completely deplete the battery and charge it up on one fell swoop. In fact, I'm sure I've read that in phone user guides before now. Well, apparently, not so.
Information from a website called Battery University, produced by battery company Cadex, and summarized by Science Alert, suggests that fully charging a battery "stresses" it, and can reduce its potential life. Even worse, if you charge it overnight (and don't we all?), the battery constantly receives "trickle charges" to keep it at 100% while It's plugged in, and this keeps the battery in a stressed state, which breaks down the chemicals in the battery and negatively affects its lifespan.
So, it is actually better for the battery, and will extend its life, if we never charge it right up to 100%, and never leave it plugged in once fully-charged. Instead, we should be charging it in short bursts throughout the day, and keeping it cool (e.g. out of its case) while charging. Our batteries will thank us by lasting longer and performing more optimally.
It's funny how received wisdom takes hold and becomes the unquestioned truth. There again, maybe that perceived wisdom is actually right, and Battery University is just a ploy by Cadex to wreck out batteries and invest in new ones, or a malicious campaign by the Russians or the Chinese to unplug the West?

Plans are in hand to move the nesting Ottawa killdeer

The Canadian media has been all over the nesting killdeer that is holding up an Ottawa blues festival.
A killdeer is a reasonably common species of plover that likes to nest in rocky open ground. This particular one chose a cobblestone path near the Canadian War Museum in downtown Ottawa, which also happens to be the location the main stage of the annual 11-day Ottawa Bluesfest, which is due to kick off next week. Rather than just move the bird, organizers starting on the set-up for the festival have cordoned the bird off, and the National Capital Commission is providing round-the-clock security for the bird and its eggs. An Environment and Climate Change Canada license to move the bird had been arranged, and volunteers from he Woodlands Wildlife Sanctuary are due any day now to move the bird to a more suitable spot about 50 metres away. Contingency plans are also in hand to deal with the hatching eggs, just in case the move freaks out the mother and leads her to abandon her brood.
It's all kind of ridiculous, but also rather heart-warming. The Bluesfest is expected to go ahead on schedule next week, although it might be a little noisy for the nesting mother. Maybe there should be a volume cap too?

UPDATE
The move seems to have gone well. It was llned with military precision, and involved a painstaking campaign of gradual moves of one metre each. Each time, there is a breathless wait to see whether the mother will come back to the nest in its new location. It's looking good so far.