New Normal Is A Continuation Of The Old War Machine – For The Common Good, Of Course
The Democrats face the same problem as the Republicans – they are corrupt, and owned by Wall St. That includes, of course, the big banks, Big Oil, Big Tech, the…
August 2020
IDEAS THAT MATTER: The COVID Crisis–Are The Youths Trying to Kill Us?
I have often felt sad over the state of The Youths. What with robots coming for their jobs and Climate Change, their future seems lacking. But by the time its…
IDEAS THAT MATTER: The COVID Crisis–Are The Youths Trying to Kill Us?
I have often felt sad over the state of The Youths. What with robots coming for their jobs and Climate Change, their future seems lacking. But by the time its…
The Penguin Classics Book
Did you know there is a card game played in Japan at the New Year, called uta-garuta, where 100 cards have a full poem on each — traditionally taken from…
The Hermeneutics of Suspicion
The title is a phrase I encountered while reading Mark Thompson’s excellent book on political rhetoric, Enough Said: What’s Wrong With the Language of Politics? Thompson’s book is both about…
Absent watchdogs
Most journalists, particularly ones occupying the BC Press Gallery, have spent little or no time examining Site C, the costliest public project in BC history. In contrast, I remember daily…
We’ve got a goddamn plan!
Chrystia Freeland is going to be a great Finance minister. The first thing she will have to do it get a grip on the pro-Morneau leaks from her department. Like…
For Your Saturday Consideration
With apologies to anyone (well, almost anyone) who suffers from a reading disability, I enjoyed this, and hope you do too: Fox News is right: Any idiot can read off…
Sturgis, the Results Start Coming In
It’s only been a week since the 80th annual Sturgis motorcycle rally wrapped up and, as expected, the Covid-19 pandemic results are beginning to flow in. So far Minnesota, Nebraska…
The Latest in Mod-Cons, a Wildfire Smoke Tracker
California Redwood burning What will they think of next? Canadians now have a website devoted to wildfire smoke. A quick click shows you where the smoke is coming from and…
Saturday Morning Links
Assorted content for your weekend reading. – Sheila Block writes that Chrystia Freeland and the Libs have a golden opportunity to build a more equitable society in the wake of…
missing nyc: spontaneous political street art in bloom
This story in The New York Times made me miss New York City more than anything has in a very long time. All over the city, artists have created murals…
Covid Journal, August 22, 2020
Nature, food and cures.
Saturday Photo: Goldenrod and Badminton, the Resilience of the Former, the Lure of the Latter
Here you have the remains of a badminton court on which a generation or two of nuns played on summer afternoons. Part of the convent’s grounds was sold to a…
Can We Tough It Out Until 2022? And, If We Do, What’s Next?
It could be two more years before the Covid-19 pandemic is reined in. That’s the latest from the World Health Organization. It probably comes down to the fact that, while…
Tightrope Walk
Justin Trudeau has been walking a tightrope lately, Michael Harris writes. His gymnastics were triggered by the resignation of Bill Morneau: Morneau’s demise triggered a chain of events that prompted…
Musical interlude
Sylvan Esso – Ferris Wheel
Plague Update: Fixation on Ventilators morphs into Ventilation
“There’s no perfectly ‘safe’ level of ventilation because we don’t actually know what ‘safe’ is, since we don’t know how much exposure leads to transmission,” Angela Rasmussen, a Columbia University…
The Simpsons And Presidential Politics
They had Marge Simpson respond directly to a real political actor referring to the Democrat VP candidate’s voice as if it sounded like the cartoon character voice acted by Julie…
The Markets and the Economy. Might As Well Be on Separate Planets.
There was a time when stock markets were expected to rise and fall in step with the health of the economy. We call that the Era of Sanity. That time…