On Strength and Contempt: Skyler and Sinead
the infamous album I want to start with the admission that the first DVD I ever got was Sinead O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. It’s attached…
Marie Snyder
It Doesn’t Matter
It doesn’t matter why they’re dressed as a tiger, have they got my leg? Just one more thing about educational reform. Well, for the weekend at least. It relates to…
Margaret Trudeau on Mental Health
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…