Dear Globe and Mail
A wonderful response to the Globe and Mail's editorial endorsing Harper for PM.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Dear Globe and Mail
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Royal wedding: Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
Royal wedding: Does Kate Middleton really want to marry into a family like this? - By Christopher Hitchens - Slate Magazine
I can't argue with anything Hitchens writes here, but I still hope for the best for these two. It helps that I don't watch TV news.
An Open Letter to Stephen Harper
An Open Letter to Stephen Harper: "Nowhere is your mastery of fiction more evident than in your decision to run on your economic record when you don’t actually have one. Smart of you to take credit for Canada’s financial stability in the current global recession when it was exactly neoconservative policies like yours that unraveled the economy south of the border, and shamefacedly socialist ones, put in place before your party even existed, that protected our own. (I don’t know if you remember, for instance, a certain Liberal decision back in 1998 to pull the plug on some major bank mergers.)"
Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian
Canada's image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian: "Canada is a cultured, peaceful nation, which every so often allows a band of Neanderthals to trample over it. Timber firms were licensed to log the old-growth forest in Clayaquot Sound; fishing companies were permitted to destroy the Grand Banks: in both cases these get-rich-quick schemes impoverished Canada and its reputation. But this is much worse, as it affects the whole world. The government's scheming at the climate talks is doing for its national image what whaling has done for Japan."
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Gender Imbalance in Media, Geena Davis, Broken Models of Masculinity & Femininity - Thompson on Hollywood
Gender Imbalance in Media, Geena Davis, Broken Models of Masculinity & Femininity - Thompson on Hollywood: "“the more hours of television a girl watches, the fewer options she believes she has in life. And the more hours a boy watches, the more sexist his views become.”"
Sunday, April 10, 2011
The Blind Man Who Taught Himself To See | Men’s Journal
Utterly amazing.: "Kish can hardly remember a time when he didn’t click. He came to it on his own, intuitively, at age two, about a year after his second eye was removed. Many blind children make noises in order to get feedback — foot stomping, finger snapping, hand clapping, tongue clicking. These behaviors are the beginnings of echolocation, but they’re almost invariably deemed asocial by parents or caretakers and swiftly extinguished. Kish was fortunate that his mother never tried to dissuade him from clicking. “That tongue click was everything to me,” he says."
Silencing Dissent: The Conservative Record | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Silencing Dissent: The Conservative Record | Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives: "The Harper government’s now lengthy record of silencing – or attempting to silence – its critics also includes the removal of heads of government agencies, commissions, and tribunals who insist on making independent decisions. Academics who have spoken against government actions or policies have also been targeted."
An open letter to Canadian journalists - CAJ
An open letter to Canadian journalists - CAJ:
Under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the flow of information out of Ottawa has slowed to a trickle. Cabinet ministers and civil servants are muzzled. Access to Information requests are stalled and stymied by political interference. Genuine transparency is replaced by slick propaganda and spin designed to manipulate public opinion ...
In addition, the Access to Information system has been “totally obliterated” by delays and denials, according to a scathing report by the country’s information commissioner. Requests are met with months-long delays, needless censoring and petty political interference ...
Politicians should not get to decide what information is released. This information belongs to Canadians, the taxpayers who paid for its production. Its release should be based on public interest, not political expediency.
Tuesday, April 05, 2011
The Dollars and Cents of Bats and Farming - NYTimes.com
The Dollars and Cents of Bats and Farming - NYTimes.com
Every day, a bat eats much of its body weight in insects, many of them harmful to crops. A group of scientists led by Thomas Kunz at Boston University calculated how much more money cotton farmers in one region of Texas would spend on pesticides if bats weren’t present. Extrapolating from those numbers, they estimated that bats save American farmers somewhere between $3.7 billion and $54 billion a year, most likely about $22.9 billion.
This is a huge savings no one notices as long as bats flourish. But bat populations are severely threatened, especially the commonest species, the little brown bat, which is being decimated by a fungal disease called white-nose syndrome. The disease has spread all across the eastern half of the country and is now moving westward from Oklahoma.
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