A World Without Food Security
This map, published in today's Guardian, is an eye opener. It charts how much of the world faces food insecurity. That, by the way, is all of the world except…
The Mound of Sound
The Japanese Live Longest. Why?
A girl born in Japan today can expect to live to age 86. Japanese life expectancy has increased 30-years since 1947. A series of papers in the British medical journal,…
Merger? Why?
If the future of the Liberal Party was to be the party that it was under its last two leaders then maybe it would be time to throw in the…
Is It Just Me? Do You Think Lloyd Robertson Was a Great Journalist?
At long last Lloyd Robertson is stepping down, resigning as anchor of CTV national news. I'll bet Lloyd can't find anyone still in the business who was there when he…
U Vic’s Gift to the World
The University of Victoria in conjunction with the British Columbia government is releasing online a 4-part course on climate change. The programmes cut through the scientific jargon and present the…
Michelle Bachmann – Hurricane Irene Was a Message from God
“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to…
Has Libya Already Fallen to al-Qaeda?
According to Asia Times, the Libyan rebel commander now in charge in Tripoli and his colleagues elsewhere throughout the country are al-Qaeda assets.His name is Abdelhakim Belhaj. Some in the…
Is This Harper’s Plan for Athabasca?
The Australian government is moving to protect steelworkers' jobs against the impacts of its own carbon pricing regime at a cost of $36,000 per year per worker.In a report to…
Kapitalism = Capitalism – Regulation
Karl Marx had a theory of capitalism that few of us have managed to understand and fewer still accept. We wrote him off as a communist agitator, an enemy of…
The Funniest Ad I’ve Seen in a Long Time
I was in London Drugs a couple of weeks back and on the shelves I spotted a new product, "Fresh Balls."Here's their ad, courtesy of YouTube:
And If You Had Any Doubt the Radical Right Is Stark Raving Mad
House Republicans maintain that NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is a huge waste of money. In fact it's such a huge waste of money they're planning to force…
The Ugly Face of the Corporatist State
A big h/t to Carey over at Finding Clarity for posting this Carlin sketch. And they called Carlin a "comedian." I'm reposting the clip because it needs to be disseminated…
What We Need Now – Another Square Deal
Nothing would please me more than the implementation of an entirely conservative policy platform. The conservative was US President Theodore Roosevelt. The policy platform was Roosevelt's "Square Deal."Roosevelt's policy focused...
About British Columbians’ Supposed Tax Revolt
There has been a lot of uninformed opinion by people in distant parts of Canada about the meaning and significance of the referendum in which a majority voted to repeal…
BC HST Dead as a Doornail
The people of British Columbia have spoken. The Harmonized Sales Tax initiative sprung on them in a totally underhanded manner by Stephen Harper's new ambassador to Britain has gone down…
US State Department Declares Keystone Pipeline Low Risk
TransCanada Corp's proposed Keystone XL pipeline to move Athabasca Tar Sands bitumen to Gulf Coast refiners cleared a big hurdle today. The US State Department reported the venture poses "no…
F-35 Grounded, Again
The Pentagon has just announced it is again grounding the F-35 fleet, the third time this year.The 20 operational test and training aircraft were ordered parked Wednesday until engineers and…
What Adam Smith Didn’t Know. The "Invisible Hand" of the Market is Holding a Knife to Our Throats.
We weren't supposed to have to worry about such things. The "market" was supposed to be self-regulating, self-correcting. Adam Smith told us as much and, after all, he was a…
Of Course It’s a Hoax – A 35-Billion Dollar and Counting Hoax
Memo to Congress. The U.S. has tied its previous record for weather/climate-related losses. That's the bad news. The worse news is that it's only August and you've got three more…
The Battle of Underground Tripoli
Where's Waldo, er Gaddafi? After all, the guy swore he'd fight to the end but, then again, some of us remember when Muammar Gaddafi was determined to fight Israel to…