In the end, though, the rules do matter - it’s just that obeying them doesn’t. They need to be there to create a tension between conservatism and innovation. If the innovation continued unchecked, unmonitored by Susie Dent, then the language would fragment into thousands of mutually incomprehensible dialects.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/03/david-mitchell-english-language-grammar/print
In Our Time - History of the Royal Society
A great series on the history and influence of the Royal Society.
To Bee or Not to Bee : The Nature of Things
An interesting discussion of bees with excellent footage. The documentary makes a good case for the importance of bees and describes the many challenges they face.
Fun to see some old colleagues too.
Christmas Excitement
Good candidates for elimination from political language http://tgam.ca/GA7 (via @globeandmail)
Top song of 2009 in the Routley household? Boom Boom Pow by the Black Eyed Peas. Clearly the kids have too much control over the music. #fb
Wednesday, December 30, 2009 →
Canada deserves both a government willing to stand up and defend their decisions and a functioning parliament with mature debate.
Our current response to terrorism is a form of “magical thinking.” It relies on the idea that we can somehow make ourselves safer by protecting against what the terrorists happened to do last time.
Is aviation security mostly for show? - CNN.com (via Instapaper)
International human rights, it seems, are something the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit stands ready to impose on others, but not on ourselves.
Getting Away with Torture - The New York Review of Books (via Instapaper)
Irresponsibility might seem to moralists an unsatisfactory condition for an adult, but in practice it can be a huge relief.
The case for building green has rarely been made more clearly.
“It’s very simple,” explains Stuart Bowden, senior vice president of software company SAS: “We doubled our square footage, but halved our costs.”
thestar.com iPhone : Hume: Going green brings unexpected savings (via Instapaper)
History has exploded from the least likely corners; spurious events unsettled our surest expectations. The 2010s will be volatile, unpredictable, dangerous – but not what we hope, and not what we fear.
Ten years that shook, rattled, rolled and helped repair the world - The Globe and Mail (via Instapaper)
Wednesday, December 16, 2009 →
Why do these people keep bugging us like this? Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it’s shown to be wrong? At what point am I allowed to simply say, look, I’ve seen these kind of claims before, they always turn out to be wrong, and it’s not worth my time to look into it?
Good overview of the consequences of the Climatic Research Unit emails for climate policy http://instapaper.com/zWfgti9R (via @globeandmail)
When Bureaucrats (are) Attack(ed): Richard Colvin and the end of Responsible Government - Gargoyle: the BlogBack in the good old days when the bargain was firmly in place, it would have been highly inappropriate for a bureaucrat to do as Richard Colvin did in his testimony before the special committee on Afghanistan, and effectively blow the whistle on the government from his safe perch in the embassy in Washington. If he gave advice and was ignored, he should have resigned or kept quiet. And if asked by a parliamentary committee to testify, his answer would have been something like, “if you want to know what advice I gave the minister, ask the minister.”
Interesting discussion with philosophy professor Mark Rowlands. The first third on the differences between humans, dogs, and wolves, and the last third on perceptions of time are particularly good.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009 →
Four good questions regarding Afghan detainees http://tgam.ca/EO4 (via @globeandmail)
Thank goodness for civil servants who breach the walls of government secrecy and obfuscation and speak out for principle, knowing they will be subject to public attack by their very powerful employer.
One teaspoon of honey, about 21 grams, contains 16 grams of sugar, or 60 calories. It takes 12 bees their entire foraging lives, combined flying time of about 9,700 kilometres, to produce this much.
To understand the importance of these bees, consider that every third bite on your plate is a result of their primary role on the planet as pollinators – the most important group on Earth.
Why honeybees are falling through the cracks - The Globe and Mail
They’re playing lullaby versions of classic Led Zeppelin tunes at Owen’s daycare. Sound very strange, but intriguing. #fb
RT @rhh: And of course, now we know exactly why the Tories have been so frantically trying to muzzle Colvin http://bit.ly/J9XQW
RT @rhh: Tory’s torture defence: bafflegabble: http://bit.ly/jEg17
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 →
Mesmerizing visualization of the decline of empires http://bit.ly/258w38 (via @boingboing)
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 →
I swear the tens of thousands coming out of these (PhD) programs, they’ve got no street smarts whatsoever. They know lots of mathematical theorems – fantastic. But they’ve got no common sense.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 →
The Canadian TV industry isn’t naturally an economically viable ecosystem where each player can succeed on its own and still fulfill a cultural responsibility. It never has been and it may never be in the future. When models break - as they are now - the answer isn’t simply to drain money from one sector of the ecosystem and pump it into another. That’s a last-ditch “life support” approach, not one that promotes a sustainable future. It’s a band-aid on a much bigger problem and the answer to such extreme problems always lies in taking radical and decisive action, not applying first-aid to slow the bleeding while hoping that the problem will heal itself.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 →
Canada has left its children with little protection for the first pandemic in 41 years. Is this what Canadians wanted from their heralded national strategy?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 →
Forget fevers and sniffles. For working parents across the country, the most stressful flu symptom this fall may be that tense breakfast-table negotiation: Who is going to stay home with the kids? Who is going to wait in line for the vaccine? Who spends the night in emergency? And that unspoken question potentially underlying every answer: Whose job is more important?
The new flu symptom for parents: Who stays home? - The Globe and Mail
To the extent that we have any infrastructure policy at all, it is badly disjointed, dysfunctional, often doing more harm than good as it serves the interests of politicians who are crazy for pork rather than the real needs of the American public.
Inspiring story of Captain Trevor Greene http://bit.ly/4k15Ui (via @globeandmail)
Partisanship, the desire to do as much damage to the other guy as possible, the dramatically diminished focus on the public interest in favour of the party’s interest, has led to more dishonesty with voters, less time spent on trying to address the real issues and a dramatic increase in short-term decisions which actually run contrary to the public interest.