Author: The Mound of Sound

British Columbia’s Centre for Disease Control posts daily updates (Mon. to Fri.) of the number of Covid-19 cases across the province. The island isn’t heavily populated. 870,000 and change, about half of which live in the southernmost city of Victoria and the Capital Regional District. The further north you go

America’s racist whites, a.k.a.. Trump’s ‘base’, have a wonderful new code word, “Jogger.“ White supremacists have a new code for the n-word. It’s “jogger” — a direct reference to the death of Ahmaud Arbery, the young black man who was shot dead in February while he was running in a

Many Vancouver Islanders get a little uncomfortable when they spot a white licence plate with red letters. That means a stranger in our midst, an Albertan. Not without cause Alberta has become associated in the minds of locals with bullying and threats and now there’s the Covid-19 factor. Tofino Mayor

Lockdowns are golden opportunities for those with a mind and the means to exploit them. Under the cover of coronavirus, all kinds of wickedness are happening. Where you and I see a global health crisis, the world’s leading authoritarians, fearmongers and populist strongmen have spotted an opportunity – and they

The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, wants Congress focused on fighting what he calls the “second pandemic.”  Fortunately Mitch already has a vaccine for this contagion. Mitch is worried that some employers are worried about the health and safety of returning workers and customers. What worries them is that these

I believe it was Monday that America hit the 80,000 Covid death threshold. Today the American death toll has reached 88,000. And the Memorial Day long weekend arrives in a week. Here, in  blue, are the states re-opening for the holiday weekend. Well, at parks and bars and malls across

The prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, isn’t pulling any punches. “Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics,” said the journal, which was founded in Britain in 1823. The strongly worded critique

One thing that history has proven is that economic disruptions, bubbles bursting, recessions, depressions, always leave scars. As economist and author, James Kenneth Galbraith, son of the legendary John K. Galbraith, observes, these events drive some major and usually unpleasant changes. Labour may remain stagnant, isolated, as its members are

A car battery that won’t need replacement for a million miles or 20 years, whichever comes first, might be coming to Tesla. Last year, a team from the Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, who do research for Tesla, said in a paper that they had tested lithium-ion battery cell chemistry

Industries are trying to adapt to the Covid-19 pandemic. CNN has a look at how luxury automaker Bentley is coping. They’ve found a way to implement social distancing in their factory but it comes at a price – a 50 per cent drop in production. As meat packing plants across

Covid-19 has focused a lot of attention on meat packing plants and the high-levels of infection experienced by their workers. We’ve had a few outbreaks in Canada, two of them at Cargill packing plants.  The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing Canada’s reliance on just a few industrial slaughterhouses, food experts and

Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest such fund in the world, has unloaded its investments in the Athabasca Tar Sands. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says news that one of the world’s largest investment funds will exclude four Canadian oilsands producers from consideration for investing is part of a continuing shift

David Frum has penned an excellent take on the mental meltdown of the Mango Mussolini. (I know, I know, it’s David Frum. I don’t care.) A couple of years ago, BuzzFeed asked a former White House official to explain the logic behind some bizarre Trump action. The official responded with

I was surprised when the prime minister announced that, henceforth, Canada would arrange the manufacture of its own p.p.e. supplies – in China. That is so wrong for so many reasons.  If this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that each nation must establish and maintain a strategic stockpile of

Employers welcoming the return of their workers as the pandemic lockdown is lifted have a problem – the duty of care. It’s the employer’s responsibility under common law to ensure the safety of the workplace against known and foreseeable hazards. An employer owes his employees a duty of care in

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought the conspiracy gang out of their moms’ basements to spread seemingly limitless stupidity online and elsewhere. We’ve even got at least one of these characters here on ProgBlog. Having honed their skills on anti-vax horseshit flinging they’re back talking of hoaxes, Bill Gates’ sinister plots,

Doctor Rick Bright, recently fired head of the American government’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development agency, who was axed for refuting Trump’s push for anti-malarial drugs as a solution to the Covid-19 pandemic, is soon to testify before a House committee. House Dems posted a transcript of the evidence he’ll

The Globe’s John Ibbitson writes that Canada has a serious problem, one only tangentially connected to the Covid-19 virus we’re all dealing with. Any hope of economic recovery in Canada from the novel coronavirus pandemic hinges on the American economy recovering first. This is the worst possible news. For the

Boris Johnson wants Britain’s economy back up and running.  He says he’d prefer those who can work at home stay there but those who can’t should return to work albeit with social distancing still in effect. Unfortunately, a lot of workplaces don’t accommodate physical distancing. Meat packing plants, for example,

Texas, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and North and South Dakota are the current hotspots for Covid-19 outbreaks in the United States. In a 7 May report, obtained by NBC News, the list of top 10 surge areas included Nashville, Tennessee; Des Moines, Iowa; Amarillo, Texas; Racine, Wisconsin; Garden City, Kansas, and