Back 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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
We like to think that all great events have great causes, and obviously long-term political, economic and military forces shaped the Cold War – and how it ended. But momentous events are also a sort of ambush of history, when all those long-term pressures come together in an unexpected way. The opening of the Berlin Wall, largely unintentional, was such an event, an unsettling thought for those who see history as the result of strategy and planning by pivotal leaders.
This is precisely how the character of a country becomes fundamentally degraded when it becomes a state in permanent war. So continuous are the inhumane and brutal acts of government leaders that the citizens completely lose the capacity for moral outrage and horror. The permanent claims of existential threats from an endless array of enemies means that secrecy is paramount, accountability is deemed a luxury, and National Security trumps every other consideration – even including basic liberties and the rule of law. Worst of all, the President takes on the attributes of a protector-deity who can and must never be questioned lest we prevent him from keeping us safe.
It rarely matters who is on your side; what matters is who is against you. Unlike Gloria Loring, you don’t need a friend and you don’t need a lover. What you need is a) one quality nemesis, and b) one archenemy. These are the two most important characters in the life of any successful human
Most Canadians probably fall into a middle group. They’re sensible people who don’t like being sick, care for each other and take reasonable precautions to protect themselves and others. They have a sense of their good fortune in living in the 21st century and a sense of proportion about their priorities. When our health is at risk, we pay attention to our doctors and take our medicines and our vaccines. Then we get on with the important things of life, which centuries of progress and dedicated public health professionals have made it possible for us to enjoy.
Now, people waiting in queues will be questioned about why they are there - their likely response being that the health authorities have for months urged them to be there and indeed initially opened clinics to all. If they don’t fall into one of the risk groups, they will be weeded out. The Public Health Agency of Canada, and other health authorities, along with their political masters, should not be surprised by the resulting public fury.