A Referral for a Referral for a Referral
I’m curious: what must have happened to provoke the powers that be to make the health care system so inanely bureaucratic that wait times for life-saving surgeries are dramatically increased…
Marie Snyder
On Bertrand Russell’s The Conquest of Happiness
Some Russell quotations have been floating around lately, so I read The Conquest of Happiness, first published in 1930, and, boy, did I need this right now! The main ideas…
Lymphedema: A Research Study Overview
I’m cancer free, but very anxious about lymphedema. It’s become a bit of an obsession, so, for anyone googling it, here are all the studies that I really should have…
Nader Interview with Chomsky on the Requiem for the American Dream
Ralph Nader interviewed Noam Chomsky last Saturday about Chomsky’s new book Requiem for the American Dream and film of the same title currently on Netflix. He’s trying every type of…
Hedges on Impeaching Trump
“If the deep state replaces Trump, whose ineptitude and imbecility are embarrassing to the empire, that action will not restore our democracy any more than replacing Commodus restored democracy in…
Taking Comfort in Stoicism
When thing take a turn for the worst, no philosophy helps me like re-reading the writings of Epictetus, Seneca, and Marcus Aurelius. I had a dream last night that I…
On Mistakes
Okay, so maybe just one more post about doctors… I know it’s awfully boring. The last one was in play format to make it more palatable. But it’s tedious because…
Another Trip to ER
Me: So, I have letter from my doctor. I was hoping that would make things go faster. It still took two full hours to get to this point, though. Triage…
On Petty, Self-Serving Teachers Taking Sick Days
A timely local article (timely for what I’m going through) in the Record, discusses the horrors of teachers who are allowed to have paid sick days – or that’s how…
More Doctors and Nurses, Less Waiting
I went to the CCAC yesterday after my surgery on Tuesday – the Community Care Access Centre – an agency I only heard about when they had a local whistleblowing…
Another Surgery Down
I feel like a pro at getting surgery now. That’s probably not a good thing. It occurred to me it’s kind of like travelling. The first time in an airport…
Another Perspective on the Rise in Anxiety
Anxiety is… “not a coherent fear of a particular thing, and it tends not to focus on the problems you already have. Anxiety is the ambient apprehension that terrible things…
Living in Glass Houses
Über environmentalist Bill McKibben tells us, in The Guardian today, to “stop swooning over Justin Trudeau”: Look all you want, in fact – he sure is cute, the planet’s only…
Just Another Oil War
An article Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote more than a year ago shows how oil interests created ISIS. “The reverberations from decades of CIA shenanigans continue to echo across the…
A Bigger Problem with Air Travel
It was almost four years ago that Nature, a highly reputable peer-reviewed science journal, published a paper that suggests that climate change is going to affect us sooner rather than…
On Beauty and the Beast
I saw the newest version of this classic, which was close to being very good. There were a few long boring bits, and the CGI of the beast was hard…
Moving Your Money
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead (maybe) Here’s a little video…
On Bannon’s Propaganda and Why It Works
Check out Abby Martin’s brief doc on Steve Bannon. It’s on his love of war and his passion for making propaganda films that primarily focus on the story of society…
If We Could Be as Smart as Frogs
I regularly tell students about our likely future. It’s often met with skepticism, so I provide lots of citations from the IPCC and NASA. Then I sometimes get a lecture…
On the Philosophy of Mr. Money Moustache
A friend pointed me towards this podcast in which Tim Ferriss interviews Mr. Money Moustache (MMM), a man who retired from work in his 30s to live on the interest…