The Triumph of Machines
An article in the latest Tyee that you’re bound to find exciting, inspirational or utterly depressing. It concerns advances being made by a Richmond, B.C. firm in “M2M” or machine-to-machine…
The Mound of Sound
Making Peace with Trayvon Martin
As far as I’m concerned, George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin. The evidence wasn’t there to convict him beyond a reasonable doubt and so he walked. The U.S. Justice Department is…
Living With Nature
It’s something most people have never seen and, for those who have, it’s uncommon. Yesterday, however, I was treated to another display of a Bald Eagle death spiral. I’ve witnessed…
Global Warming Metrics, New Sea Level Rise Projections
We’re finally getting a handle on climate change impacts. We’ve just learned that it takes roughly a million years for most species to evolve as needed to adapt to a…
Evolution Takes Time. Evolutionary Adaptation Takes Far More Time Than Climate Change Allows.
Many species of plants and animals will face extinction because they cannot evolve in time to adapt to the rapid onslaught of climate change. The pace of current global warming…
Racism, California Style
Oakland television station KTVU and the National Transportation Safety Board are apologizing for a racist stunt that got on the air concerning the July 6th Asiana Airlines crash at San…
How Well Do You Remember the 70s?
Unless you’re already well into your 50s, chances are you don’t remember much if anything of the 1970s. And that’s too bad for you because, as you’ll discover in the…
What Do Toronto, Calgary and Angkor Wat Have in Common?
What do Toronto and Calgary have to do with the mysterious Cambodian city of Angkor Wat? More, perhaps, than we would care to imagine. The city of Angkor Wat, Cambodia,…
An Honest Look at Afghanistan – Sarah Chayes
When it comes to Afghanistan, honesty is a rare and elusive commodity. The Karzai government doesn’t understand the term. It’s something of an inconvenient notion to western military leaders and…
A Look At Our Bizarre Border
About that 49th Parallel Thing Courtesy of C.G.P. Grey
And They Haven’t Made a Movie About This Guy?
It’s being called “the most interesting opening paragraph Wikipedia has ever published.” It opens an entry about British army officer Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart. “Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Paul Ghislain…
If Only We Weren’t Lashed Tightly to Fossil Fuels, We Might Save the World
What would you give for a chance to reverse global warming? Think on that for a minute. What would you be willing to sacrifice to avert climate change tipping points,…
Flying Commercial Might Get a Bit More Troubling
We’re regaled with horror stories of intrusive security measures that greet the flying public these days. Things might just be about to get a lot worse. Welcome the era of…
Canada Wins! First Human-Powered Helicopter Flight
Congratulations to the team from AeroVelo on winning the American Helicopter Society Sikorsky Prize for human-powered helicopter flight. The contest required a full minute of flight achieving at least 3…
Arms Race Update – China’s New Missile Subs
They’re called “Boomers,” submarines capable of launching nuclear armed ballistic missiles. The Americans and the Russians have had them for decades, the French, Brits and Chinese too. Western navies used…
How Much Of a Third World Country is Okay for Canada?
We’ve been given a price tag for adapting Canada’s essential infrastructure to climate change – one trillion dollars, give or take a few billion. I’m pretty sure that’s an American…
HSBC Chief Economist Warns of Youth Uprising Across Europe
Stephen King (no, not that Stephen King), HSBC Chief Economist sees the same conditions emerging in today’s Europe that triggered the 1831 peasants’ uprising against the British aristocracy. In King’s…
Is Fortress Harper Crumbling?
Thud, thud, thud – that’s the sound of mortally wounded Tories falling from the battlements of Fortress Harper. Duffy, Wallin, Tkachuk, Lebreton, Wright, Perrin, Toews and, by some accounts, they’re…
A Decent Interval
The Taliban know it. Kabul knows it. So does Islamabad. What U.S. negotiators want from the Talibs is “a decent interval.” We want to leave Afghanistan without losing face, without…
The Minister of Family Values Quits
No one exemplifies the mean-spirited, in your face nature of the Harper regime than Vic Toews. That’s about to change. The Serial Diddler is taking his Wild West moustache and…