This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Paul Kelso reports on Public Health England’s findings about the connection between poverty and more health difficulties, with residents of poorer neighbourhoods facing twice the incidence of ill health. – Phil Whitaker points out the need to address the stressors causing childhood
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Accidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Jon Stone reports on Jeremy Corbyn’s message to progressive parties that voters have had enough of being told there is no alternative to austerity and corporatism: On a visit to the Netherlands on Thursday the Labour leader said socialists and social democrats risked
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – J.W. Mason reviews Quinn Slobodian’s Globalists with a reminder that the decades-long push to subjugate popular democracy to corporate interests is nothing new – and that we know well the consequences: In the early twentieth century, there were many people who saw
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – CBC talks to Robert Frank about the role of luck and privilege in generating concentrated wealth. And Kate Bahn highlights the reality that collective action is needed to help level a playing field currently tilted to benefit those who already have the most.
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: What Should Teachers Do to Prevent Gun Violence?
Lots of us have students who don’t quite fit in and spend all their time alone, friendless. They might have been bullied for being different, and we can’t always solve the problems they have trying to better communicate with other people. But the vast majority are completely harmless. Lot of
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Alan Freeman discusses the U.S.’ decline based on anti-tax dogma – and warns of the same result in Canada if we don’t stand up for our collective interests: The U.S. has always been a capitalist society but it always believed in meritocratic principles,
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: A Crackpot Posing as a Genius
I’ve been noticing many articles, recently, about the plight of loneliness. It’s now linked to anxiety and depression, and addiction, and a former US Surgeon General calls it the most common threat to public health. We blame the internet and social media for a loss of connection between people, but this
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Entitlement and Unfettered Rage
One of the benefits or downfalls of the internet is that it allows fringe groups to find each other online. When it comes to feeling like nobody in the world knows about climate change or the Myanmar genocide (or philosophy), because nobody in my immediate vicinity is too concerned or
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Tuesday Morning Links
This and that for your Tuesday reading. – Matthew Yglesias examines the direct effects of social programs, and finds there’s every reason to invest more in them: Mercury emissions (mostly from coal plants) end up in the water, where they end up in fish, from whence they end up in
Continue readingwmtc: from the 2018 cupe ontario library workers conference: libraries and the opioid crisis
I recently attended the CUPE Ontario Library Workers Conference, which has become a highlight of my year since I first attended (and was elected to the organizing committee) in 2015. It has eclipsed and replaced the OLA Superconference as the most relevant and enjoyable must-attend conference in my schedule. When
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On UW’s Mental Health Recommendations
After another suicide on the campus of the University of Waterloo, the university compiled 36 recommendations to try to alleviate the mental health crisis and held (and taped) a forum as well. It really says something about our lives that one of the recommendations is about the process of communicating suicides to
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hari’s Lost Connections
“There’s violence to knowing the world isn’t what you thought. . . . Sometimes the world doesn’t make a lot of sense, but how we get through it is, we stick together, okay?” – Gloria Burgle, Fargo I watched Joe Rogan’s interview with (interrogation of) Johann Hari about his new
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Free Meds and Mental Health Care
Perfect timing. My son just finished telling me about his trip to our family doctor in which he tried but failed to get a form filled out that will enable our benefits to cover his ridiculously expensive drugs, when I came across this post on my Twitter feed from the
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Leadership 2018 Links
The latest from Saskatchewan’s NDP leadership campaign as the entry deadline has passed and the membership deadline approaches. – While I haven’t tracked endorsements all that closely, it’s certainly worth keeping track of any changes since previous leadership campaigns between two candidates who have run before. And on that front,
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Sunday Morning Links
This and that for your Sunday reading. – Matt Bruenig writes that the concentration of wealth and power which is largely being attributed to crony capitalism is a natural byproduct of laissez-faire economics as well: An economy that distributes the national income based solely on the marginal productivity of each
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Afternoon Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Marco Chown Oved, Toby Heaps and Michael Yow discuss the long-term transition away from meaningful corporate tax contributions to Canada’s public purse: For every dollar corporations pay to the Canadian government in income tax, people pay $3.50. The proportion of the public budget
Continue readingThings Are Good: Let’s get Boys to Feel More Things
In adults we know that having the ability to feel a range of emotions to be a good thing, it allows us to better appreciate the world around us. Yes, even feeling bad can actually be good for you in the long term. We tend to want feelings and experiences
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Larry Elliott interviews Joseph Stiglitz about the rise of Donald Trump and other demagogues in the wake of public anger over inequality and economic unfairness. And Stiglitz also joins a group of economists calling for an end to austerity in the UK. –
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Friday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material to end your week. – Laurie MacFarlane points out how increases in land values have resulted in massive and unearned disparities in wealth. – Kevin Page, Claudette Bradshaw, Geoff Nelson and Tim Aubrey write that a national housing strategy needs to focus on the availability of both affordable
Continue readingAccidental Deliberations: Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Dani Rodrik writes that politicians looking to provide an alternative to toxic populism will need to offer some other challenge to a system biased in favour of the wealthy and powerful: (P)oliticians who want to steal the demagogues’ thunder have to tread a
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