I mean, Greta is great. She’s fearlessly speaking truth to power, and I agree with everything she says, including the ruder bits and the yelling. Ditto for Autumn Peltier, the teenage water activist, and so many others, although Greta’s getting most of the press right now. I hope they keep on keeping on. I’ve been […]
Category: Rants
Some disjointed thoughts on needles and pitchforks
A month or so ago, I was part of a discussion on … some social justice issue, I don’t remember exactly what, and I felt calm. Some policy thing hadn’t happened as fast as someone wanted. My comment was along the lines of: but we’ve moved the needle. It’ll move again. And I felt ok […]
Presto is a pain in the [insert body part here]
Presto has been in the news quite a bit lately. I had a cranky-making experience with being unexpectedly out of tokens on a cold night and having the fancy Spadina streetcar-platform machine refuse to sell me one unless I had exact change (the machines CAN take Interac or Visa, but don’t — the option is […]
On the folly of not clearing the leaves in the street
This past autumn, my city decided they weren’t going to pick up the leaves that fall into the street in my neighbourhood. Normally they come by once each year after most of the leaves have fallen and enormous street-sweeping-leaf-picking-upping machines haul away the detritus. But not this year. Instead, as a cost-cutting measure the leaves […]
Dear publishers: No.
At dinner the other night a number of people were surprised to hear of the absurd phenomenon of digital (and DRM’d to boot) books being more expensive than print versions — not just paperbacks, but hardcovers. So here’s one example. This looks like an interesting book. A bunch of folks I know on Goodreads have […]
It’s not the headphones
Here we have an article exploring pedestrian-vehicle crashes “in which the pedestrian was using headphones“. Results There were 116 reports of death or injury of pedestrians wearing headphones. The majority of victims were male (68%) and under the age of 30 (67%). The majority of vehicles involved in the crashes were trains (55%), and 89% […]
The annual holiday health curmudgeon warning
Again it’s time for the holiday health curmudgeons to bleat at us, disregarding mental and emotional health and a warm feeling of togetherness and community in favour of carrot sticks and abstinence. This year they’d like us to tell our relatives they’re fat. ‘Tell loved ones they are overweight this Christmas’ Christmas may be a […]
The Two Kinds of Nonprofit Conferences
Today I was watching Twitter hashtags from two separate events. Both were notionally on a similar topic, but the difference in tone was striking and it clarified something for me. There are two kinds of events that nonprofits tend to have. In the first, a select or invited group of people who aren’t terribly conversant […]
Express.
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. As I was sitting on an Air Canada “Express” plane last night, waiting for a “ramp crew” to produce a nonexistent ramp — the plane was a turboprop about two feet off the ground; the built-in stairs […]
“Tax Freedom” Day is bullshit.
Not relatively minor chickenshit — full-on full-size bullshit. If I could pitch the entire Fraser Institute off a cliff for even thinking up the term I would do it. So, yes, the Fraser Institute is going on about how June 6 is “Tax Freedom Day” this year — the day after which “Canadians finally pay […]
‘Tis the season for Expert Curmudgeons again
In previous years we’ve had warnings about Santa’s fatness setting a bad example and how we should all abjure cookies and eggnog and subsist on carrot sticks and water at holiday parties. This year it’s eating leftovers and Santa’s sleep (or lack thereof) habits that are under fire: Surely Santa will feel jet-lagged at the […]
Uggg, morning
This is a good start, but I think I need another couple points on the far left. I’m not sure I could work up enough energy to punch morning in the face.
Stereotypes
How I hate it when people live up to stereotypes. I look at the G20 coverage and that’s all I see. We had people marching peacefully for good causes, whose messages will now never be heard. We had the riot-helmeted cops marching in rows. We had idiots who like to break things and nobody stopped […]
Women don’t breastfeed? Here’s a thought —
— maybe hospitals should be nicer to midwives. I gave birth at Women’s College Hospital, and of all places I fully expected them to support my midwives. But they were unspeakably awful to them — rude, dismissive, demeaning, the whole gamut of bad behaviour. They topped it off by ignoring me (I was admitted unplanned, […]
December 6, 20 years on
Pamela Cross has already said everything I would say (and more) about this sad anniversary, so I’ll just point you to her post. Her post ends with a poem. I’ll also offer a poem, although not such an optimistic one. This one’s by Susan Griffin: An Answer to a Man’s Question, “What Can I Do […]
And yet M’s school insists I pick her up
Ah, how I love Lenore Skenazy. And STATS, who interviewed her. Perhaps the problem needed to be approached from a different angle, she thought. What if you actually wanted your child to be kidnapped by a stranger and held overnight? How long would you have to leave him outside, and unattended for that to be […]
In which I fume about absurd school forms
I am facing the annual pile of forms from M’s school. I am immediately annoyed by the size of the pile. Welcome back! Let’s spend an hour filling out forms! The pile is stapled together in the bottom left corner, WTF? which heightens the annoyance, then I nearly break a nail prying out the staple […]
Desperately sad. Easily avoided.
I have to say something about this desperately sad story, in which two children, non-swimmers both, drowned and died along with their mother, also a non-swimmer, who had been supervising them as they swam in a hotel pool (without a lifeguard). It seems that one or both girls somehow got into trouble and the mother […]
I am now determined to live to at least 83
…purely so I can use “Kiss my 83-year-old ass” as the title of a blog post. Although anything over seventy or so works with reasonable credibility, really. (h/t to Jan)
Ninety. A context-free number.
File under “not enough information to draw the conclusion they’ve drawn”: Why did 90 children die? Ontario’s child advocate was appalled to learn how many in the province’s welfare system die each year and is equally shocked at how difficult it is to get answers First, I think we can all agree that the province’s […]