A group of investors has purchased a former pulp mill on northern Vancouver Island and plans to turn it into an electrical generating plant. The former mill will burn waste wood chips, which will make it exempt from Kyoto Protocol sanctions. Deteriorating wood emits carbon dioxide whether burned or left to rot naturally, hence it’s […]
This afternoon I listened to another Royal Conservatory of Music-based grade 2 level piano recital at the Festival of Performing Arts, performed by children ranging in age from about 6 to 10. Music pedagogy has it sussed in this respect: kids aren’t separated according to age — “you’re 8, so you have to be grade […]
Briony Penn is a geographer with a sense of the mythic and the poetic: to protest the logging of Salt Spring Island, she rode her horse through a downtown Vancouver street in January 2001, (un)dressed as Lady Godiva (the picture suggests that perhaps the wig provided some measure of warmth). http://www.streaking.co.uk/relatednewsbrionypenn.htm As the title article […]
One of the great things about becoming an American citizen is having to prepare for the exam (which turns out to be a pretty undemanding test). But if you don’t know that in advance, you really bone up on US history and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and […]
In today’s column, Michele Landsberg points out that: “It’s idiocy to pronounce the U.N. ‘irrelevant’ when, in most of the developing world, it is seen as nearly an alternative form of government, and sometimes the only government. Which is, of course, why the neo-con extremists hate it so much. They hate all government that is […]
These six reporters are filing regular updates from Washington, Israel, Saudi Arabia, northern Iraq, Jordan, and the Syria-Iraq border. Interesting perspectives, check it out.
People — not enough, but the numbers are growing — are rightfully up in arms about the increase in civil liberties violations in the name of new policies appearing seemingly deus ex machina. Dan Gillmor’s experience at the Ramada New Yorker hotel is an example at one end the spectrum, the case of Mike Hawash […]
‘Been “disappeared” lately? ‘Sure you know where you live? The US? ‘Sure about that? Not Chile? Not Argentina? Several decades ago? Constitution, civil liberties? Ring a bell? Lost the remote? Read this instead: http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000603.php and write a letter to your newspaper, to your congressman, to your senator. Support the ACLU. Scream “fire!” at the top […]
In 1819 Theodore Gericault showed the Paris public a painting called “Scene of Shipwreck,” which eventually became known as “The Raft of the Medusa.” Gericault had been inspired to paint it by a recent (1816) scandal that implicated the French government in corruption and gross incompetence. (This link takes you to a page that gives […]