The Canadian Government's Department of Public Works has recently announced a change to their hiring policy - a change that would ensure that only women or visible minorities are given new jobs in that department. The change has given rise to accusations of racism, especially coming from a government that has described itself as "colour blind". The Deputy Minister of Public Works, David Marshall, has ordered the new policy to be put into place for the next five months, at which time it will be reviewed.

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I find it a convenient shorthand to tell people I live in New Orleans, but since 1992 I've actually lived in the nearby bedroom community of Mandeville. As many people who actually do live in New Orleans will tell you, though, Mandeville isn't New Orleans. It isn't even close, no matter how easy it is to drive here from there.

The movies would have you think the culture of New Orleans is Cajun French, but that's not so. Cajun culture is centered almost 150 miles from here, in the Acadian parishes surrounding the city of Lafayette. If you want a culture that belongs uniquely to New Orleans, you'd find it in Chalmette and the Ninth Ward, where the language, food, and customs are like no place else on Earth.

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The arcane art of tracking takes what I like to think of as a hacker's approach to making music. The interface is primarily numeric, notes are entered via the keyboard, length, parameters, effects are often entered in hexadecimal notation, and code flies across the screen as if you were looking at the opening credits of The Matrix. What's not to like? This article is a tutorial for beginners, more specifically for nerds with no musical training, on how to start making electronic beats using the most sampled break in the history of recorded music.

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Her father was not a kind person. That did not mean that he was a cruel person. He was just somebody that seemed to live at the house, not bothering to relate to anybody. The only person that merited more than a barely whispered order (he always spoke softly, as if he could not be bothered to raise his voice) was her mother. And even then, all their conversations were clinical and about daily management of the household, a lot like two accountants meeting to discuss the current situation of some company they did the books for.

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While visiting my native land--the Faroe Islands--this summer, I became bored and looked for somewhere even more remote and isolated to venture to: somewhere in the Arctic I'd never visited. Having seen most of Scandinavia and much of northern Russia, my choices were limited but had to be apt. I ended up going to Scoresbysund, Greenland and then to Longyearbyen, Svalbard. These are some of the most remote parts of the world and their isolation and insular situation both makes them spellbinding places to visit and also reflections of broader Nordic culture.

This is the story of my journey.

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A group of activists is planning to download a song from the internet in front of the building of the SGAE (the Spanish association of authors and editors, well known for its campaigns against file sharing in P2P networks). The action will take place on the forth-coming monday.

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On Thursday October 27, 2005, Bouna Traore and Zyed Benna, French teenagers from the outskirts of Paris, were electrocuted while hiding from the Police in an electric substation. An official denial from the police was not enough to stop a night of rioting: the police spent the night clashing with groups of young people from the banlieue. That first night, 27 people were arrested. In the eleven nights since, the rioting has spread to more than thirty cities, from discontented community to discontented community all over France. Thousands of cars have been destroyed. Many public buildings have gone up in flames, including schools, stores, and police stations. More than one-thousand arrests have been made

And yet, the police are unable to control the rioters who, in a country where guns are illegal, shoot live ammunition at them. Every night, as the sun sets, France erupts in flames. In cities like Paris and Lyon, but also in smaller cities like Avignon, small communities like Valréas and Carpentras. Why is this happening? Why are rioters saying that it will not end until there are two dead cops?

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Regions of the world often exist in states of uneasy peace. As with a super saturated solution, a seemingly innocuous event can serve as the catalyst for a violent reaction. Scratch the glass and stunning things will ensue.

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In February of 2005, the U.S. State Department published a proposed amendment, in the Federal Register, of U.S. passport regulations. The proposal sought public comment on the idea of embedding RFID chips in all newly-issued passports beginning in 2006.

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On November 2, the residents of Denver, Colorado passed the Alcohol-Marijuana Equalization Initiative. With 100% of precincts reporting, the final tally for the vote was 56,001 YES votes to 48,632 NO votes, approximately 54% - 46%. The measure changed city law to allow for possession of up to an ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and over. The act is largely symbolic, though, as state and federal laws supersede local law, and authorities have already stated that state possession laws would be applied. However hope remains, for the passage of the initiative marks Denver as the first area in the nation to legalize private use of marijuana, for recreational as well as medical use. Is the legalization of marijuana at the federal level now within our reach?

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