There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen From CBC Books I had the fortune of seeing Margaret Trudeau speak on mental health a few days ago. She told her life story in exactly an hour with great intensity and humour. She peppered
Continue readingAuthor: Marie Snyder
A Puff of Absurdity: AER and Educational Reform: Makin’ It Work
From Free Info Society Whenever people start talking about A.E.R., I hear the letters being “sung” by Johnny Rotten. Somehow it seems to help. So we’re getting to a point that it might all be feasible. Change is always hard, but I feel like I’m over the hump. There are still
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: If You Build It, They Will Come – Really!
Photo Cred: Harrogate Cycling Group In today’s Record, Jeff Outhit comes very close to suggesting that if we bike in K-W, we should expect to get hit by a car. It’s not safe out there: “…riding a bicycle to work is dangerous and counter to common sense.” Counter to common
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Celebrating Talent
Convalescing from a wicked cold that’s beating the crap out of me, I watched a trio of movies about amazing musicians: Joe Strummer, Ginger Baker, and Sixto Rodriguez. In the films, other musical geniuses were highlighted along the way. What a delight! But as Ginger, Jack and Eric talked about
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On the On-Going, Never-Ending Regional Bike/Car Conflict
On Friday, I had a conversation in class about cyclists being hit so much in the region because of our culture around cycling here relative to other cities, and then I saw Luisa D’Amato’s article in The Record suggesting cyclists should be licensed to be on the road. First, on
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Law-Abiding Politicians
“I think politicians are entitled to private lives,” – John Baird Yet another article in today’s G&M – page 3 no less – about pot smoking politicians. Recently Trudeau admitting to having a puff since becoming an MP. I totally support legalization of marijuana, and I don’t care if you were
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Canada: A Fair Country
I used to be so proud to be Canadian and that’s wavered over this difficult period in our history. I was searching for this book to loan out, and once found, I got totally engrossed in re-reading it. It made me feel so much better. It’s an important book about
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Paternity Rights in Rape Cases
It’s an interesting moral dilemma to have a judge decide a child has access to a father when the only contact the mother and father had was a sexual assault producing this child. This isn’t entirely the story here. In this article, it could be a case of statutory rape.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: The Benevolent Dictator isn’t a Fascist
In a post a while back I advocate the best of our worst options for saving our species: a government that forces us be less wasteful. It’s an idea that James Lovelock proposed, and some called it fascist. But there’s a world of difference between enforcing legislation that actually protects
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hedges’ Empire of Illusion
“People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.” – James Baldwin Thus begins Chris Hedges‘ Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Raising the Minimum Wage
So, the argument goes something like this: If you raise minimum wage, corporations will pay for that cost by raising prices, thereby increasing inflation, and we’ll all be poorer for it as everything gets more expensive. The problem isn’t wages, but inflation. Therefore, we should not increase minimum wage. It
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Solar Panels
By request – how well does using solar panels work? Well, it’s hard to say. I covered my roof with panels under the Ontario MicroFIT (Feed-in Tariff) program that ends next year. So far I think it’s only in Ontario, but some other provinces are thinking about it. The power I
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Just Legalize it Already
I spent a lovely extended weekend in Awenda and fell in love with Penetanguishene through a scenic bike ride. The sun filtered through the trees on either side of the road, with the blue, blue lake peeking through – gorgeous! But it was marred by my chosen beach read: Chris Hedges’
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Categorization of Behaviours and Abilities
People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will change everything. There is no single magic bullet. – Temple Grandin Some people are quite upset about the recent change to the DSM that removes Aspergers as a separate category from Autism. Now kids formally diagnosed as having Aspergers
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On a Four-Hour Workday
Stephen Elliott-Buckley echoes Bertrand Russell‘s idea of the 4-hour workday. Russell in brief: Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men [and women]
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Sammy Yatim: When is a Cop Justified in Using Fatal Force?
There’s a “justification” piece in the National Post on behalf of the cop who shot Sammy Yatim. It doesn’t offer much to go on beyond that we shouldn’t trust a brief video to tell the whole story. But I asked a cop what he thought of the situation, and he gave
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Raising Gable Ends Alone
It’s more physically demanding than raising kids alone, yet no less fraught with peril. I’m just documenting my morning of partial success on my studio construction. I was ecstatic to figure out all the angles for the gable end. And it all fit perfectly – more or less. But then
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Liberty and Death
One of the reasons I advocate for restrictions on personal freedom as a means to save our species from extinction is that I need my own behaviours to be externally regulated! Intellectually, I can assess what I need from what I want – I think better than most even. I’m
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Too Stupid to Live – Literally
Mound of Sound has a post at Disaffected Lib about the likelihood of doubling GHG by 2100. If we don’t do something very quickly and very intentionally, then, based on temperature projections from the 1970s on, we won’t be able to live in this part of the world sixty years
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Chomsky
I think everyone should read Chomsky. He’s brilliant, yet far less dense and inaccessible as some people think. He’s a different person than you or me – well, than me for sure. He has a wealth of knowledge and an astute analysis of events pretty much from the beginning of
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