Friday Morning Links
Assorted content to end your week. – Neera Tanden points out that a wide range of citizens rely on a strong safety net at one time or another – and…
science
Harper Government In Stark Contrast To President Obama on Climate Policy
* This exchange took place in the Canadian House of Commons yesterday: Mr. Bruce Hyer (Thunder Bay—Superior North, GP): Mr. Speaker, two of Canada’s greatest challenges are rising CO2 and…
Thursday Morning Links
This and that for your Thursday reading. – Emmett Macfarlane and Justin Ling both weigh in on the Cons’ newly-unveiled prostitution legislation – which seems downright calculated to exacerbate the…
Is silver safe as a medicine?
The short answer to that headline question – based on everything I’ve read of late – is no. It’s not that silver has no medical uses – one form has…
On the good news front—Experimental Lakes Area is open for business
Of all the victims of the federal government’s suppression of science, the Experimental Lakes Area (ELA) was perhaps the most important. The ELA, comprised of 58 freshwater lakes along with…
The Statistically Fair Climate Change Debate
John Oliver has it right. Who “gives a shit” if 1 in 4 Americans are wrong about a fact? The “news” should stop polling to find out what proportion of…
Astrophotography ramps it up a notch
This is incredible! I didn't think this kind of astrophotography was going to be possible so soon! cbc.ca/news/technolog… #space— John Klein (@JohnKleinRegina) May 13, 2014 The ability to photograph light…
Saturday At The Movies
The Choice.
How many chords?
How many chords does a musician need to know? How many does an amateur musician who plays mostly popular, folk and blues music, need to know? My first answer has…
Seeing evolution in action
The pop-science notion is that evolution takes a long time. Millennia, many millennia; even millions of years. But is that always true? Can one actually see and measure evolution in…
Lost Shakespeare play found?
Cardenio. Written by William Shakespeare. Based on an episode in Miguel Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote. The novel was translated from Spanish into English in 1612. The play was known once,…
What do we know about Bell’s Palsy?
Bell’s Palsy is one of those rare ailments, and one that annoys more than threatens, but can be difficult and socially awkward for sufferers. It’s also one that still baffles…
The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement
Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton,…
Is this the end of the gluten-free fad?
Last November, when I first wrote about the gluten-free diet fad, I bemoaned how an everyday protein, a staple in human diets for many millennia, had become demonized by…
Thinking about a new ukulele
I’ve been thinking seriously of adding another ukulele to the herd. A tenor resonator, or resophonic, like the Kala shown above. That’s the re-designed 2014 model. I’ve played earlier models,…
Stretched Thin, Part 1
As some of you may be aware, during my more prolific days on the ‘Kog, I decried the decline in the quality of journalism, a trend which I directly attributed…
Monday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your Monday reading. – Nafeez Ahmed writes about the dangers of combining growing inequality and increased resource extraction: By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases…
I get email – Human rights and Climate change
Recently, I wrote about a ruling against APEGA, Alberta’s professional association for engineers, by the province’s Human Rights Tribunal. Low and behold, the defendant in the case, Ladislav Mihaly, emailed…
The Blustery Winds of Stupidity Hit Weyburn Hard #skpoli
At least 2 Weyburn City Councillors were not duped by anti-Wind propaganda that afflicts many municipalities. There’s probably no bylaw against this family running a noisy, polluting diesel generator in…
#Tarsands Polluting Groundwater and Rivers
As scientists have demonstrated in the past, the strip mining and tailing ponds employed on a Mordorific scale in northern Alberta are polluting ground and river waters. Sorry #tarsand shills,…