Russia Grants Snowden Temporary Asylum
Edward Snowden gets to leave Moscow airport, finally. The Russkies have given Snowden a one-year temporary asylum to their country. Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden’s Russian lawyer, told the media he handed…
The Mound of Sound
Bystanders to Calamity
Once while visiting remote Rivers Inlet I took shelter an old logging cabin that was apparently undergoing renovation. The inner walls had been stripped bare to reveal newspapers that had…
We Emit, These People Get the Tab
Across south Asia there are more than a billion people whose livelihood and lives are utterly dependent on the annual Monsoon rains. The severe impacts of climate change on their…
Christy Clark’s Giant Methane Fart – Part Deux
British Columbia premier Christy Clark has visions of our province becoming an energy superpower in its own right thanks to massive reserves of shale natural gas, methane, in northern B.C.…
When Athabasca Came to Windsor
There’s a small mountain of Athabasca bitumen byproduct, petcoke, being amassed on the American bank of the Detroit River by – the Koch brothers, of course. And now, clouds of…
A Kid With a Utility Knife Gets Mowed Down. In Montreal, a Guy With 182 Firearms Who Shoots at Cops Gets a Non-Lethal Rubber Bullet.
Isidore Havis is a lucky man. He’s especially lucky that he lives in the Montreal burbs, not in Toronto. 71-year old Havis is in a Montreal hospital with a possible…
Define "Democratic Reform"
You knew when Harper appointed Pierre Pepperpot to his cabinet as minister for democratic reform, something remarkably undemocratic was bound to follow. And so it has. Pipsqueak Pollivre has struck,…
The Guardian Praises BC’s Carbon Tax Initiative. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch, or, Christy Clark’s Giant Methane Fart
According to The Guardian, British Columbia’s 5-year old experiment with carbon taxes has been a great success and stands as an example of to governments everywhere. In 2008, British Columbia…
Those Critical Five Seconds in the Life and Death of Sammy Yatim
Stills taken from security camera video of the Sammy Yatim execution, published by National Post, may be the most important evidence of all. They reveal, according to the paper, that…
Gone Fishin’
No posts today from me. Time for some long overdue moto-photo therapy. The moto part is my now 8-year old BMW R1200GS, “The Beast”: It is widely considered the best…
Let’s Retire the "Once in a Hundred Years" Label
Calgary had a “once in a hundred years” flood in 2005. Eight years later it had a “once in a hundred years” flood that was three times worse. There’s something…
We Have to End Police Killings and Brutality.
Indulge me for a minute. Watch closely the video of Saturday night’s killing of a kid aboard a Toronto streetcar. The young man was apparently holding a knife with a…
Coming Soon, Your Eyes on the World
Astronaut Chris Hadfield reconnected countless millions of people to the wonders of space. His space station performance of the David Bowie classic “Space Oddity” has racked up more than 17-million…
What’s Old Is New Again. The Return of the Workhouse.
Stephen Harper has a prison fetish. Despite steady declines in crime rates in Canada over the past four decades, Steve is hell bent on building new prisons. We like to…
Does the Solution to Climate Change Rest On Economic Reform?
What follows began as a comment I attempted to leave at A Puff of Absurdity in reponse to a post by Marie Snyder that you really should read. In it,…
This Doesn’t Look Quite Right
A knife-wielding man on a TTC streetcar last night wound up on the receiving end of a barrage of police gunfire. A horde of cops had the streetcar surrounded when…
Maybe We Shouldn’t Put All our Eggs in One Aerial Basket
Britain did something profoundly stupid in the early 30s. It invested a huge amount of its air force budget in twin-engine, light bombers. These designs were easily capable of out-running…
From Paradise to Paradise Lost
If you’ve never experienced the magic of California’s Pacific Coast Highway, you might want to add that to your list of things to see before they’re gone forever. To a…
NOAA Releases New Warming Data – Deniers Flummoxed, Again
Here’s the skinny from the National Climate Data Center of the U.S. National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration. It’s just boring data but it goes to refute the claim that global…
Climate Change and the Attack of the Cannibal Lobster
It’s kind of funny but it’s really not, anything but.