Shahriar Shibley

  It very exciting to travel in Europe. The regions are all different with different languages. Yet there is a nice harmony among the countries. Countries are tourist friendly. No wonder Europe enjoys the largest percentage of tourist revenue in the world.  Pre pandemic London, February 2019. The underground is crowded as usual. London subway system is the oldest in the world and it is very extensive. But it is not very clean. London is very old city, like most major European cities. Europeans are eager to preserve their heritage. Travelling from North America, it feels like Europeans are living in a time capsule, yet very modern. London has some of the finest museums of the world. Amazingly there is no entrance fee. Stone henge is great place to visit. It is only an hour and change bus ride from London. After the pandemic the travel season picked up in spring of 2022. The airline and airports were in chaos. Too many travellers. Many travellers lost their luggages. So, passeng...

 Canada's healthcare is administered by the provinces. Healthcare is not free, contrary to popular belief. It is tax payer funded. Most provinces collect health tax with personal income tax. The rate is depended on individual tax bracket and there is a maximum amount one has to pay as health tax. Provinces play the role insurance administrator and regulator. They also owns the hospitals. Provinces' operation is non-profit. All other aspects of healthcare is for profit. Doctors have their own practices, with or without affiliation to hospitals. Labs and test centers operates on for-profit basis and they all bill the provincial health insurance. Patients usually never see the bill. The advantage of that is when patients come out of hospital, they are usually very generous in donating to hospital foundations. That money is used in improving the hospitals. Some expense of healthcare are payed by the citizens. Prescription cost, ambulance are out of pocket expenses. Usually employer...

Leave the mask in the sun. The UV rays of the sun and the heat will do the job in a natural way.

Toronto's PATH Network should be made more systematic and easy to navigate. Paths should either be named or color coded. Detailed maps should be available in all subway stations, just like TTC maps. This will make it more user friendly to not so frequent users and tourists. Upon completion of Eglington Crosstown LRT, the PATH network will most likely be expanded. More publicity of the PATH will help generate more revenue for the businesses in the PATH network.

Both Stephen Harper and Tom Mulcair, are talking about abolishing the Senate. If they have their way, there will be no Senate in Ottawa. Canadian Senate, a copy of British House of Lords, does not have any function. The Senate is just an ensemble of political cronies of ruling parties. Occasionally, their activities are political liabilities to political parties. On the other hand, US Senators are elected and they play a major role in US politics. So, Canadian Senate and US Senate are just two different species. Naming a Canadian NHL team in copy of Washington Senator is just the work of a bad copy cat. It is about time we show some originality and name our capital's hockey team in honour of our MPs who do all the heavy lifting of Canadian politics.

The moon is a God gifted permanent satellite to us. So far, the piece of of real estate was not utilized at all. Over all these years of our civilization, we became sophisticated enough to have a second look at moon. International Space Station is about 350 kms above earth, rotating at a speed of 27.744 km/h. It takes about 92 minutes to orbit the earth and it does so 15.7 times a day. Compare these stats with that of moon. The average distance of moon is 384400 kms from Earth. It orbits the earth in 27.32 days. It has a thin atmosphere of Ar, He, Na, K, He and Rn with pressure ranging from 10 to the power minus 7 to 10 pascal. Landing a rocket ship would need at least ten times the effort needed to reach ISS. But building a base on moon definitely has some advantages over ISS. First of all, it will be on solid ground. Unlike ISS, which is purely experimentation, moon exploration can be financially rewarding if we can start a rear earth mining activity. Because of the thin atmo...

The. volume of online commerce is increasing everyday. The question arises, whether it all coming at the expense of brick and mortar stores. Or is it coming mostly from a century old media, the mail order catalog industry? Online industry is competing against a format of retailing which was in existence for thousands of years. But, in terms of economic sensibility, how much should online retailing should expand on? Big box retailing is labor intensive. Starting from front line salespeople to warehouse employee and management, retailers have to deal with a huge payroll. But is online retailing a whole lot less labor intensive? It is true they don't need front line salespeople, but they need to support a bigger IT department and shipping operation. From customer perspective, websites gives the opportunity to see who is offering what and at what price. You can save yourself from the trouble of going to the shopping mall and walk in the Isles by ordering online. But remember someon...