Ask a Kandahari what he wants from his government and you’ll get a familiar answer: not vast ideas but practical solutions to everyday problems
Microposts
Success in the sciences unquestionably takes a lot of hard work, sustained over many years. Students usually have to catch the science bug in grade school and stick with it to develop the competencies in math and the mastery of complex theories they need to progress up the ladder. Those who succeed at the level where they can eventually pursue graduate degrees must have not only abundant intellectual talent but also a powerful interest in sticking to a long course of cumulative study.
How Our Culture Keeps Students Out of Science - Chronicle.com
globeandmail.com: We must green the market
On Language - Me, Myself and I - NYTimes.com
Ontario is not Alberta, and the philosophy that provincial rights should be paramount has always had to compete with a powerful sense that Canada comes first.
globeandmail.com: Ontario struggles to decide whether or not it exists
BBC NEWS | Magazine | No time to think?
The New Atlantis » The Hydrogen HoaxUnfortunately, it’s all pure bunk. To get serious about energy policy, America needs to abandon, once and for all, the false promise of the hydrogen age.
Bridges Still Crumble, a Year After the I-35 Disaster - The Lede - Breaking News - New York Times Blog
The Nature of Glass Remains Anything but Clear - NYTimes.com
The café operates on the honour system: Grab what you want, drop your money into an old streetcar fare box next to the doughnut counter and waltz out.
At least since the invention of television, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org, entails some engagement with text.
Literacy Debate - Online, R U Really Reading? - Series - NYTimes.com
… the result will be an open culture of trust which gives scientists a real incentive to outsource problems, and contribute in areas where they have a great comparative advantage.
At one moment the patient experiences a painful phantom limb; at another he sees a mirror image of his intact hand and the pain disappears
How the Mind Works: Revelations - The New York Review of Books
Toronto, in my opinion, is uniquely a city of neighbourhoods, and the most important person in my job is the neighbourhood cop.
Stop the presses! Crime rates are falling
A typically clear analysis from Jeffrey Simpson on the divergence between the actual rate of crime and the attention devoted to crime by the media. Statistically, Canada has never been safer – particularly in Ontario.
It is one of Canada’s pathetic ironies that the two provincial premiers least concerned about greenhouse gas emissions govern the provinces most at risk from climate change.
One might suppose that such a recurrent chain of blunders would gall a politically potent segment of the population. That it has evidently failed to do so in 2008 may be the only important unreported fact of this otherwise compulsively documented election season.
Stoooopid …. why the Google generation isn’t as smart as it thinks
I think this is a legitimate problem. How do we teach children to focus? I’m sure my abilities are waning.
globeandmail.com: New law puts green screen on government decisions
My new favourite photo of the kids
Fantastic tool for keeping track of content to read. Especially with the offline access from the Apple App Store application.
Kelly and I are very happy to announce the arrival of Owen Bruce Routley. He arrived Tuesday morning just after four weighing a solid 8lbs 8ozs.
Although there were some challenges with the delivery, both Owen and Kelly are recovering well and should be home later this week.
Edward Burtynsky documents our impacts on the landscape through extraordinary photographs. In this presentation at TED he describes his motivations for the work and showcases some of his best images. The descriptions of China are particularly impressive.