The Great Montreal Link Exchange continues (sorry this is late): Every week Mitch (w / t) picks a link for me and a link for Alistair (w / t). Alistair and I do the same. Losing Our Cool”: The high price of staying cool. Alistair for Hugh: Since Montreal’s in the middle of a heat [...]
I haven’t been writing much bloggy stuff lately, certainly not political rants. And true enough I don’t know much about the history/implications of suspending parliament by prorogue (can anyone point to a good recent source that explains Harper’s action in a historical context? Is it usual? Unusual? – I’d never heard the word before last [...]
I have not been paying much attention to the US health care debates, but I gather those opposed to Obama’s health plan have been portraying Canada as some kind of healthcare disaster. “We don’t want to be like Canada,” they say, “where the government has ruined healthcare.” My wife Christine is an emergency doctor, so [...]
There are five days left in the federal government’s copyright consultations. Go make your voices heard! http://copyright.econsultation.ca/ For more info, see Michael Geist’s info page: Speak Out on Copyright.
The Government of Canada is holding copyright consultations, which you can answer by sending an email to the this address [info AT copyrightconsultation DOT gc DOT ca] which answers the following questions: 1. How do Canada’s copyright laws affect you? How should existing laws be modernized? 2. Based on Canadian values and interests, how should [...]
For the price of a beer (or a pitcher, or a round), you can support VisibleGovernment.ca … the non-profit that promotes online tools for government transparency, openness and accessibility around government and civic data (yay!). They’ve got a little fundraiser going, in celebration of Canada Day: Beers for Canada … How we’ll spend your money [...]
Kids boycott classroom with CCTV cameras. People call them brats. Kids respond with an op-ed that every adult should read. Many users suggested that cameras were a good idea because they could be used to keep an eye on bullying and student behaviour, we were accused of been “narcissistic megalomaniacs” angry at “being nabbed for [...]
My pal Chris wrote a moving post about an experience he had growing up in South Africa, a white boy who went with his church to talk about Jesus in the “coloured” townships. Which made me think about traveling and the relationship we rich, “white,”[*] educated people have with the rest of the world. I [...]
“The Big Takeover: The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power. How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution,” by Matt Taibbi, in Rolling Stone: In essence, Paulson and his cronies turned the federal government into one gigantic, half-opaque holding company, one whose balance sheet includes the world’s [...]
As a start-up, I’ve complained about how conservative the Canadian business culture is, especially banking and finance. But boring has it’s benefits, when things get shaky. From Newsweek: In 2008, the World Economic Forum ranked Canada’s banking system the healthiest in the world. America’s ranked 40th, Britain’s 44th. Canada has done more than survive this [...]