LindbergMTL

Ce sera peut-être une salle à géométrie variable qui pourra acceuillir des cirques et pas juste le CDS... ... et un Ludoplex pour millionnaires... ... et une plage intérieure avec vagues et palmiers 12 mois par année (avec toit rétractable)... ...un helipad en haut de la tour condhotel... ...pour se rendre rapidement à Lac Mirabel pour un peu de shopping... ...au rêveport, pour de l'exotisme participatif... ...et au Mont Tremblant pour quelques partys et spas... ...et on repart à NY ou Londres par un Flexjet qui nous attend à l'aéroport de La Macaza...

Pas nécessairement un gros casino rempli de machines à sous... mais quelque chose de plus spécifique, pour les high rollers, peut-être?

Oui, enfin les vacances!

Ouais, ouais, ouais, pask ils lon l'affaire, lez americains!

Oui, je parierais gros sur un gros C! C A S I N O en PPP avec Gillet. That's big, that's REALLY BIG !

Une salle de 3 500 places, créée par Sceno Plus, qui a créé les salles de Céline Dion et du Cirque du Soleil à Végas, c'est peut-être le point d'ancrage que Gillet concocte, afin de construire un complexe touristique de classe internationale, qui sait ?

Ce qui me parait intéressant dans cette nouvelle c'est l'idée que si vous êtes un investisseur, et que vous voulez des bons retours sur votre investissement pour de nombreuses années dans un secteur ou vous ne voyez pas un ralentissement de la demande, investissez dans le logement pour soins médicaux. Même le prochain complexe Viger compte sur la proximité du CHUM pour remplir ses espaces. Les fameuses 2 tours de 60 étages de Hakim étaient peut-être si farfelues que ça après tout?

J'y étais la semaine dernière. Une ville innondée par de riches, très riches investisseurs des 4 coins du monde. Pourquoi? Une grande beauté naturelle, un climat assez clément, un climat politique canadien (rien d'énervant). Je compte y passer les 2 prochaines années.

Cet édifice ne sera pas un landmark, c'est sûr, mais je réserve mon jugement. Ses grands murs vitrés feront une belle impression, il me semble.

Super PEPS?

By DAN STRUMPF, AP Business Writer Fri Aug 15, 12:14 PM ET NEW YORK - When Honora Wolfe and her husband moved to the outskirts of Boulder, Colo., she wanted an environmentally friendly way to commute to her job as a bookshop owner in the city. Wolfe, 60, found her solution about a month ago: an electric bicycle. It gets her to work quickly, is easy on her arthritis and is better for the environment than a car. "I'm not out to win any races," she said. "I want to get a little fresh air and exercise, and cut my carbon footprint, and spend less money on gas. And where I live, I can ride my bike seven months out of the year." The surging cost of gasoline and a desire for a greener commute are turning more people to electric bikes as an unconventional form of transportation. They function like a typical two-wheeler but with a battery-powered assist, and bike dealers, riders and experts say they are flying off the racks. Official sales figures are hard to pin down, but the Gluskin-Townley Group, which does market research for the National Bicycle Dealers Association, estimates 10,000 electric bikes were sold in the U.S. in 2007, up from 6,000 in 2006. Bert Cebular, who owns the electric bike and scooter dealership NYCeWheels in New York, said his sales are up about 50 percent so far this year over last. Amazon.com Inc. says sales of electric bikes surged more than 6,000 percent in July from a year earlier, in part because of its expanded offerings. "The electric bikes are the next big thing," said Frank Jamerson, a former General Motors Corp. executive turned electric vehicle guru. They're even more popular in Europe, where Sophie Nenner, who opened a Paris bike store in 2005, says motorists boxed in by traffic jams are looking for an alternative for short journeys that doesn't involve navigating overcrowded transport systems. Industry associations estimate 89,000 electric bikes were sold in the Netherlands last year, while 60,000 power-assisted bikes were sold in Germany. The principle behind electric bikes is akin to that behind hybrid cars: Combine the conventional technology — in this case, old-fashioned pedaling — with a battery-powered motor. The net result is a vehicle that rides a bit like a scooter, with some legwork required. Most models have a motorcycle-like throttle that gives a boost while going up hills or accelerating from a stop. On some models, the motor kicks in automatically and adjusts its torque based on how hard the rider pedals. Although regulations vary by state, federal law classifies electric bikes as bicycles, and no license or registration is required as long as they don't go faster than 20 mph and their power doesn't exceed 750 watts. Price largely determines weight, quality and battery type. A few hundred dollars gets you an IZIP mountain bike from Amazon with a heavy lead-acid battery. For $1,400, you can buy a 250-watt folding bike powered by a more-powerful, longer-lasting nickel-metal hydride battery like those in a camera or a Toyota Prius. At the high end, $2,525 buys an extra-light 350-watt model sporting a lightweight lithium-ion battery similar to a laptop's. Most models can go at least 20 miles before plugging in to recharge. Although the cost of electricity can vary, fully recharging the battery on a typical model costs less than a dime. Joe Conforti, a commercial film director from New York, uses a four-year-old model designed by former auto titan Lee Iacocca in the 1990s for running errands or getting to social occasions. "It's really nice," said Conforti, who is eagerly looking to upgrade to a newer, more powerful ride. "If you've got a date, you go to meet friends — you go out on a (conventional) bike, you're gonna sweat up. You go out in an electric bike, it's great it's terrific, you're not gonna sweat up and you ride home fine." Bike dealers said the growing demand goes beyond just the uptick in gas prices, but also because of word of mouth. Cebular said business at his store and on his Web site has been booming. "Fifty percent of that increase is probably because of gas prices, and the rest is that there's just more bikes out there," said Cebular, who has run his shop on Manhattan's Upper East Side for seven years. Improved technology also has made electric bikes more popular, Cebular said. "When I started, there was only one bike that had a nickel-metal hydride battery — everything else was lead-acid and was 80 or 90 pounds," he said. "That's a huge improvement." Jay Townley, a partner at Gluskin-Townley, said the latest electric bikes are sleeker, better looking and hide their often-clunky batteries better than ever. That goes a long way to attract baby boomers and other mainstream customers. "The new designs that we've seen in the marketplace are going to inure to the benefit of the electric bike companies," he said. Ultra Motor, an England-based electric bike and scooter company, is betting big that it can capitalize on what it seems as a growing market for attractive-looking two-wheelers designed specifically for U.S. commuters. The company on Tuesday unveiled its "A2B" model, a slick, low-riding electric bike. Ultra Motor took a conventional bicycle and redesigned it with fatter wheels, a lower center of gravity and a thick shaft designed to hide the lithium-ion battery inside, U.S. Chief Executive Chris Deyo said. The result is a cross between a motorcycle and a mountain bike. The company already has signed up 75 dealers nationwide to sell the $2,500 bike starting next month. "A year ago, when you mentioned the word electric bike, people looked at you and they really weren't sure what it was," Deyo said. "Today, what we're finding is we're actually having dealers call us seeking an electric bike to meet the demand." Jamerson, the former GM executive who has become a staunch advocate for electric transportation, believes this is only the beginning for electric bikes. He retired from GM in 1993 after helping develop the company's EV1 electric car, and he's been an avid follower of alternative transportation ever since. The EV1 project, though widely seen as a spectacular failure, helped convince Jamerson of the value of electric transportation. Given soaring fuel prices and thinning patience with foreign dependence on oil, Americans are ready to embrace electric vehicles, he said. "Did you know there are 70 million electric bikes on the road today in China, and they are selling at the rate of 2.6 million electric bikes a year?" he said. "The public at large needs to understand that it is the right thing to do to move to electric transportation, and electric bikes and electric scooters will allow you to do that, to get that familiarity." As for Wolfe, she could not be happier with her bike, a 48-pound mountain bike with a lithium-ion-powered assist made by California-based IZIP. A self-described "tree-hugger for decades," she drives her Honda Insight hybrid car or rides the bus when she's not using her bike to get to work. It's part of her own personal campaign to reduce her carbon footprint. She also powers her home with help from a set of rooftop solar panels, and a geothermal furnace heats and cools it. The furnace, she adds, even heats her water. Just one more way to reduce emissions, she said. "Even my 92-year-old mother has a Prius," she said. "So I come by my green credentials genetically." ___

On fait beaucoup de comparaisons entre pays ici... Y a des surprises! NEIL REYNOLDS Globe and Mail Update * E-mail Neil Reynolds * | Read Bio * | Latest Columns August 15, 2008 at 6:00 AM EDT Canada fared reasonably well – or appeared to do so – in KPMG's Competitive Alternatives, its comparison of the costs of doing business in more than 100 cities in 10 countries: Australia, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico, the Netherlands, the U.S. and Canada. In this comprehensive report, published last month, KPMG graded these cities and countries by calculating a Total Tax Index (TTI) for each of them, with the U.S. providing the benchmark score of 100. Canada scored 78.3 – meaning that its real corporate tax rate was 21.7 per cent less than the U.S. rate. Mexico emerged as the lowest-taxed jurisdiction (TTI: 70.2), Italy as the highest (TTI: 185.3). The KPMG report attracted more attention than competitiveness reports of this kind normally attract – perhaps because people thought that it made the distinctly contrarian case that Canada's corporate taxes had fallen enough already. (On its website, the CBC put a correspondingly triumphalist headline on its story: “Canada Better Than U.S. for Corporate Taxes.”) If this were indeed so, why does Finance Minister Jim Flaherty keep trying – by inference, obstinately – to cut them more? KPMG produced another set of numbers, however, that didn't get as much attention: each country's total cost of doing business. In this exercise, the company identified 27 significant costs of running a business, calculated all of the after-tax costs of starting an enterprise and operating it for 10 years, and assessed the cost implications for a variety of other factors – labour markets, infrastructure, regulatory environment, and so on. In this comparison, Mexico emerged – predictably, as an emerging economy – with the lowest cost of doing business. (It has a 20.5-per-cent cost advantage over the U.S. benchmark cost.) Among the nine kindred industrialized countries, KPMG said, Canada, Australia and the U.S. were “cost leaders.” Business costs in the three countries, KPMG concluded, “are virtually equivalent, with less than 1 per cent separating them.” France ranked fifth, with the lowest-cost structure in Europe (and only 3.6 per cent higher than the U.S. benchmark). Britain (7.1 per cent), the Netherlands (7.3 per cent) and Italy (7.9 per cent) impose higher business costs than the U.S. benchmark – but Japan (14.3 per cent) and Germany (16.8 per cent) impose the highest costs of them all. KPMG's message here is not precisely the lullaby of the headline reports. Yes, Canada's corporate tax rates are lower than U.S. rates. They had better be lower. With one of the highest nominal corporate tax rates in the world, the U.S. nevertheless remains one of the most competitive countries in the world – perhaps the most competitive. Its high tax rates notwithstanding, the company says, the U.S. has experienced great gains in cost competitiveness in recent years. “Canada and Australia,” it says, “have both lost their previous cost advantages relative to the U.S.” And the depreciation of the U.S. dollar doesn't account for all of the erosion. KPMG's conclusions aren't any more comforting for Canada, in fact, than the World Economic Forum's gloomy conclusions in its Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) for 2007-08. Published last October, the report concluded that the U.S. – “endowed with sophisticated and innovative companies operating in very efficient markets” – remains the world's most competitive economy. (The GCI Top 10 are, ranked in order: the U.S., Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Singapore, Japan, Britain and the Netherlands.) The GCI ranks Canada 13th, one notch lower than in its 2006-07 report. It puts the celebrated BRIC economies far down the list. It ranks Brazil in 72nd place, Russia in 58th place, India in 48th place and China in 34th place. The World Economic Forum report lists the top “problematic factors” confronted in each of 131 countries. It says the U.S. and Canadian economies share the same three top impediments to doing business: (1) high tax rates; (2) cumbersome tax regulations; and (3) inefficient government bureaucracies. In this sense at least, it finds that governments themselves are the principal barrier to more efficient, more productive economies. In another comprehensive report card exercise of the same kind, the World Bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers calculated the Total Tax Rates (TTR) that 175 countries impose on corporations. This illuminating report, Paying Taxes 2008: The Global Picture, concludes that corporate income tax rates, by themselves, account for only 37 per cent of the taxes that corporations actually pay. Expressing actual corporate taxes as a simple, straightforward percentage of corporate profits, it reveals that the honest-to-God corporate tax rate in the U.S. is 46.0 per cent; in Canada 43.0 per cent. Corporate taxes at these rates are preposterous. Elsewhere in the world, they get more preposterous still. (Germany: 50.8 per cent. France: 66.3 per cent. Mexico: 51.2 per cent. Argentina: 112.9 per cent.) Only from this distorted perspective do Canada's corporate tax rates look remotely rational. Canada urgently needs more competitive edge. Mr. Flaherty is far from finished.

un tramway sans fils j espère.

Héhé, je crois qu'il y a du vrai dans tout ce que vous venez d'écrire. Bon, Y A-T-IL UN FRANÇAIS DANS LA SALLE?

Si tu te perçois comme un condamné à la pauvreté et éventuellement à l'extinction, tu ne vas pas prendre les actions pour remédier à la situation. Tout est perception et attitude, l'action suit, mais chacun son opinion. Et les français, j'en connais pas mal et depuis les années 60. Ils sont loin de se percevoir comme le meilleur pays au monde, loin de là! Au contraire, ils ne cessent de me dire que le pays est condamné à s'apauvrir petit à petit.

Montréal sera une ville de premier ordre si les montréalais se perçoivent et agissent comme des citoyens de premier ordre, peu importe le système politique dans lequel ils seront.

Aux Etats-Unis, 4 aéroports viennent avant NY! C'est étonnant.

On va l'avoir notre aquarium-safari! On dirait une confirmation en tout cas. ADM doit avoir hâte de remplir Mirabel d'eau, pour qu'on ne parle plus de Mirabel comme aérogare. Et le train va se rendre à Mirabel un jour, ne serait-ce que pour alleger l'autoroute 15, lourdement affectée pour tout le développement qui se passe dans cette région.

C'est que c'est sa job d'exacerber le sentiment nationaliste. Et comme les JO sont un terrain fertile de nationalisme, c'est sûr qu'elle intervient. Nous sommes encore une planête de tribues! Est-Ouest, Canada-Québec, Montréal-Toronto, Laval-Plateau, les Habs ... Faut croire que tout ça , ça nous apporte beaucoup de fun!

Il n'y a rien de permanent, que ce soit le succes ou le declin, tout peut changer, et aussi rapidement que les mentalites le permettent (desole pour les accents)

La traduction géante fait un de un des mots mirobolants de résultat, par exemple, la traduction géante fait un de un des mots mirobolants de résultat.

OU: entrée de la Place des Arts, Salle Wilfrid Laurier Quand: durant le festival de jazz Comment: camera Sony 7 mp

Non, ce fil n'est pas celui du concours, juste une photo.

Un extrait d'une dissertation très approfondie sur l'humour. August 2008 page 120 Least funny city: Seattle. It's rainy, progressive, and almost kind of European, it's Norway on the Pacific... Funniest city: Montreal. Every summer, our favorite anglophobic metropolis to the North plays host to the biggest, best comedy festival in North America. Drink potent Canadian beer while catching the late-night stars of tomorrow... Maudit que j'les haillis les américains! S't'une joke, lol...